Words & Pictures

Lake Tahoe Wedding

I got to go up to Lake Tahoe with Mia and her extended family for the wedding of her cousin, Russel who married Deborah. We hung out a lot in Incline Village in north Lake Tahoe and the wedding was held at Deborah's fathers house on the lake. It was a beautiful setting and a ton of fun being there. The weather was perfect all weekend and I took advantage of it as much as I could. Sure I might have left sleep deprived, but at least I packed a lot of activity into 2 full days. 

Below are photos in order of events - We flew up Friday afternoon, rented a car in Reno and got to the house rental in Incline Village and quickly got over to the rehearsal dinner. After that, we had to get in the lake for a late-night dip. I actually couldn't sleep that night, so I was up before dawn and drove around taking pictures and getting eating by bugs, followed by a hike up the State Line fire road overlooking the California and Nevada border in north Tahoe. Saturday was wedding day, obviously an awesome setting for it on the water with a dock. The newlyweds even went out for a fast speed boat loop between the wedding and reception. There's a photo of Russel stepping in as bartender at the end of the night, which was basically my last non-fuzzy memory... thanks, Russel. 

Sunday was off to a slow start and we hung out at Incline Beach in perfect summer lake weather. Mia and I drove to the Ritz Carlton at Northstar in Truckee just to make the most of our short weekend trip and walked around the grounds and had a nice early birthday dinner celebrating Mia at one of the restaurants there. Being at a ski resorts in the summer is awesome, it's not crowded, the air is fresh and the views are spectacular, but we definitely want to make a trip back now in the winter. We got up before dawn Monday morning to hurry to the airport and catch a 7:20am flight. The last picture was in Truckee during the sunrise, of an unusual looking thin layer of fog settled in a valley.

Philip Skinner
Ojai Heat Wave

Record high temperatures were forecasted for Los Angeles, hovering around 96 at the beach - which is insane - and 118 in land. We knew there was no escaping it and staying on the beach would have been unbearable. Luckily, we got to to Ojai and meet up with Mia's family. This was my first time back with my new camera so I made sure to get up pre-sunrise Saturday and I hike up a trail overlooking the Ojai valley. There were intense devastating fires throughout this area in December but the valley and many of the homes were spared. We saw evidence of this when we camped here a couple months ago at Wheeler Gorge. The sunrise wasn't great but photos are below. It was 80 degrees at 5:30am and I spent the rest of the day trying to stay cool inside and by a pool. I was so lucky for the opportunity to get away from the boat for the weekend and enjoy a little vacation.

This is actually the first time I tried taking nighttime photos with my new camera and the different is remarkable compared to the older smaller camera sensor. I’m pleased with it. Can you spot the rabbit in the night photo?

Philip Skinner
May-June Catchup

In the slideshow below, it shows some of the events in the last few weekends. The highlights were that Mia and I celebrated a 5-year anniversary since we had out first date. We went to Laguna Beach, hung out at thousand-steps beach and stayed at the Laguna Beach Inn. I didn't take a lot of pictures except for in a really cool bell-tower on the property of the Inn. The weather was pretty gloomy after a sunny beach day, which was perfect.

Another weekend, Matt, Julia and Andy flew down from San Francisco and we all met up at my dad's. It was the first time my dad got to meet his grandson and a really special weekend hanging out both Saturday and Sunday. There was a weekend to visit Sierra Madre and celebrate Mia's cousin, Sydney, graduation from UCLA with her PHD. It was a big all-day party with friends and family. For me personally, it felt like two worlds colliding with Mia's family and our friend group all in the same place hanging out, it was a ton of fun. There are some photos of people throwing the little parachute-men from a balcony, but I promise there was a lot more fun activities going on all day, I just didn't have my camera out for very long. The following day was fathera day and Mia’s dad drove up to have lunch with us and we hung out at the nice open-area around the restaurants in Manhattan Beach just to tak and catch up as well as make some summer beach day plans.

Additionally, I got home early enough a couple times on a Friday to see the weekly Redondo Beach car show at Ruby's. It's more of a community meeting than any official car show, just people parking in the lot and telling stories for a few hours. But I've learned that I have an interest in more automotive photography, picking out the critical design pieces of era-specific cars, and finding interesting compositions with all the tiny details that made people fall in love with these vehicles. 

This most recent weekend I had no plans, I took advantage of that by replacing the insulation for the refrigerator lid, replacing a lightbulb in the v-berth and a much needed boat cleaning. Mia and I went kayaking (her) and rowing (me) Saturday and Sunday I kayaked solo. I also drove up to the top of Palos Verdes to get a glimpse of our weather situation - all weekend, the South Bay was cloudy and gloomy, but I could see sun inland. It was all divided by Palos Verdes, so I was able to get some nice pictures of the fog rolling over hills and burning off for a few minutes, until the afternoon clouds were blown in. 

Philip Skinner
Arizona

Antelope Canyon, Monument Valley, Horseshoe Bend. These were the targets of my second ever photo-based trip (the first being Yosemite a couple months ago). I left LA  at 2pm Friday with my buddy / basically pro-photographer, Leif. The trip was his idea and given the itinerary and opportunities to excel my experience in photography, I obviously had to go. It was about a 9 hour drive to Page, AZ. The entire area is in Arizona along the Utah border, and the highways take you back and forth over state line, between Friday and Sunday we crossed state lines 16 times. 

 

Another major driver to go on this trip and get more serious about photography is to expand my portfolio on my other website, philipskinnerphotography.com . I'm testing the waters of what potentially could be done to spend time working on my hobby while sharing the results with others. 

 

Mother's Day Weekend

There was a last minute plan and an attempt to fit in the most hang-out time evenly with my family which ended up being super successful. I drove to northern california for mother's day weekend and got to hike with my Scott, Nicole and Sophie in the Berkeley hills. We were greeting with perfect weather and views of San Francisco bay. After growing up here I was probably sightly desensitized to the views but once I go back there is a new appreciation for the sweeping views of the city and bridges.

After the hike I drove west to Sausalito and got to hang out with Matt, Julia and Andy for the afternoon. I stayed there and on Sunday went with Matt to surf Fort Cronkite. It was cold and rugged surf compared to the LA surf scene I've grown comfortable with. Followed that up Matt and Julia hosting a Mother's day afternoon gathering to celebrate new moms and grandmas.

Philip Skinner
Local Scenery

 Friday night I hiked down the short path at Bluff Cove down to a rock reef. I've sailed around this rocky point in the Catalina 30 and sailed over and through it one summer day on a 15' sailboat. The amount of land to take pictures from drastically changes depending on tide levels.Friday night, just as the sun was going down, I was able to walk around the tide pools and get a close picture of the horizon and tried using the pools for reflections. It was a dull sunset but I was content to get back in time to use my camera and try out the wide angle lens.


The next morning I was up at 4:45 and drove up to Del Cerro park, located at a good lookout point on top of Palos Verdes and facing Catalina Island. Here's some pictures of the shipping traffic, the moon high above, and the sun coming up over the channel and over Los Angeles to the north.

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To round out the weekend, I finally went kayaking again, leveled the v-berth bed with some Dri-Deck that I had to wash the scent of plastic off of, and did other random projects around the boat.

Philip Skinner
Car Show

There was a corvette club car show in the parking lot next door on Saturday. I was pretty dang excited to try my new wide angle 17-35mm lens which is perfect for getting right up close to the classic cars and the lens distorts how they look which produces interesting results. 

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Also a first for my blog,  trying a slideshow (below) of photos. Hope you enjoy! 

More testing out of my new lens. And a really awesome relief-style map of Redondo / Hermosa beach that was on a wall at the Redondo Beach Hotel.  

More testing out of my new lens. And a really awesome relief-style map of Redondo / Hermosa beach that was on a wall at the Redondo Beach Hotel.  

Mia’s friend Laura flew down to visit and they stayed in the Redondo Beach Hotel just across the street. As a special event for the weekend we went to Justin Timberlake’s show at the Forum on Saturday night. We also checked out Eatily in Century City which was a huge open seating room which about 15 different restaurants and shops all for good Italian food. 

Philip Skinner
Upgrade
Big Tujunga Canyon Bridge near the dam  

Big Tujunga Canyon Bridge near the dam  

Sun setting under hazy clouds over Malibu mountains from Mt. Lowe trail. I didn’t see a single other person on my hike which seemed weird given how great it was.  

Sun setting under hazy clouds over Malibu mountains from Mt. Lowe trail. I didn’t see a single other person on my hike which seemed weird given how great it was.  

From the Mt Lowe railway tunnel looking towards Mt San Antonio. Also displaying some of the power of this 28-300mm lens  

From the Mt Lowe railway tunnel looking towards Mt San Antonio. Also displaying some of the power of this 28-300mm lens  

Welp. I made a significant investment into this photo hobby of mine that I've been gradually learning since the beginning of last year. You might remember how it all started, last winter I dug out a Pentax film camera from storage and shot a few rolls. This camera had some risks of losing precious film in the mail and limits to 24 and 36 exposures that must be perfectly done or were a waste of money. I loved taking pictures and that shutter click, though. So I got the most sensible bang-for-my-buck entry-level camera in June which is the Olympus OM-D EM-10 mark II. Many good reasons to justify that, but it left me wanting a couple of things. Better photo quality from a larger camera sensor, better feel of the camera and quality of images. Now that I've taken some more trips and learned a lot more about photography, and thanks to my brother for an Adobe subscription, I kept rolling my eyes at the limitations of the micro four-thirds mirrorless system. I missed the cler-chunk feel of a real shutter opening and shutting and how much more information a full-frame camera can gather. There are pros and cons to everything and I was tipping the scales back and forth for a long time to determine if I should get a full-frame DSLR.

Sunday’s walk around the Redondo pier area. I just had my earphones in and tried to find a creative way to compose the place.  

Sunday’s walk around the Redondo pier area. I just had my earphones in and tried to find a creative way to compose the place.  

I finally did. The Nikon D750. It's been around for a few years but it's a workhorse and powerful camera with solid reviews and the right price range. A user can use an endless variety of lenses to it and it's likely not to change for a long time. The other front-runner was a new Sony A7iii which is a mirrorless camera but it's full-frame and offered a ton of technology like my Olympus. Some of that worried me, because I feel like the mirrorless cameras are kind of delicate, but what worried me more is the cost of native Sony lenses... most are more than the camera itself and it would've brought a bundle out of my budget. I could go on, trust me I was fully engaged in thinking about these two cameras for weeks.


For now I still have the Olympus and if nobody wants to buy it then I guess I'll keep it. It's funny because the complete setup I had for that is less money than an *inexpensive* lens for the Nikon. So I guess you could say this hobby is getting serious. I am excited to learn even more as I go on.

Other pictures from around Redondo as well as the result of “operation hoist kayak so I don’t have to keep cleaning the bottom” by using extra dock line to suspend it out of the water. I’m please with the result and hope no more really strong winds …

Other pictures from around Redondo as well as the result of “operation hoist kayak so I don’t have to keep cleaning the bottom” by using extra dock line to suspend it out of the water. I’m please with the result and hope no more really strong winds come through for awhile. Center is a picture of the new Nikon D750 and 28-300 lens. I probably won’t use the lens hood that Often as it makes it seem even bigger and caused some minor vignette when at the widest angle. 

not much of a sunset through the haze 

not much of a sunset through the haze 

Does this qualify as street photography? 

Does this qualify as street photography? 

I’ve noticed the colors are different on this camera. probably more true and wid-ranging especially the dynamic range between light sky and dark shadows. 

I’ve noticed the colors are different on this camera. probably more true and wid-ranging especially the dynamic range between light sky and dark shadows. 

Back to my adventure. Mia was out of town which meant I had some boat chores to do, including hoisting up my kayak on extra dock line and (hopefully) the last time I had to scrub the bottom of it. Midwaythrough SaturdayI was antsy and decided to pack a cooler with lunch and my backpack with some hiking clothes and go for a drive. I went up north of LA into the Angeles Forest on the winding 2-lane roads. These are popular for car and motorcycle enthusiasts who speed around the corners so I found myself pulling aside at turn-outs at least 20 times. I was on an entirely different pace for my day. The point was to see what's up there because I was always curious, and to find some good vantage points to try out my new camera. I eventually made my way to the Mt Wilson summit which overlooks the LA basin and could see all the way to Catalina even through the haze and clouds. I then hiked on a trial that was once used as a railroad from 1902 - 1938 wrapping along cliffs and through tunnels on narrow trestles - It's actually insane that they built this. It looks more like a frightening wooden roller coaster nailed into hillsides from the black and white pictures online. As things go, there was a devastarting wind at the observatory that it served, which knocked it down. So someone turned the land into a tavern to keep people coming up but then that had a fire and was never rebuilt. It was dismantled a few years later.


Sometimes I want to take these far trips to find hikes, views, and a feeling of the outdoors along with some interesting history. I think of Death Valley, Sequoia, Joshua Tree, Big sur, Lost Coast, etc. But this was basically in Los Angeles and checked off all the boxes, albeit they'd be smaller check marks.

Looking down at Pasadena from the tunnel

Looking down at Pasadena from the tunnel

There were images at the trail head of a railway track and train along this cliff through the tunnel to provide supplies to Mt Wilson. Also I was impressed by the camera gathering the sun hitting the peak on the right while still gathering detail in…

There were images at the trail head of a railway track and train along this cliff through the tunnel to provide supplies to Mt Wilson. Also I was impressed by the camera gathering the sun hitting the peak on the right while still gathering detail in the tunnel. Unedited.  

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dusk view Angeles Crest Highway and long exposure to get some of the cars racing down it. 

dusk view Angeles Crest Highway and long exposure to get some of the cars racing down it. 

Philip Skinner
Wheeler Gorge / Ojai
Smoke from late afternoon campfires starting throughout the full campground. 

Smoke from late afternoon campfires starting throughout the full campground. 

We arrived at 9:30 Friday night and our reserved spot, #066, we discovered was essentially a parking spot in another groups much larger combined campsite area. I should’ve assumed something was up when the host saw our reservation and replied in a h…

We arrived at 9:30 Friday night and our reserved spot, #066, we discovered was essentially a parking spot in another groups much larger combined campsite area. I should’ve assumed something was up when the host saw our reservation and replied in a hesitant mumble of acknowledgement. 

We drove back to the host and found out about the first-come-first-serve sites and since we were some of the first arrivals for the weekend we took advantage of #020 pictured here.  

We got lucky the campsite also had perfect trees for a hammock. In fact the site to the right of this photo was occupied by 2 guys who showed up and excusively slept in their hammocks and never set up a tent thanks to all the trees. 

We got lucky the campsite also had perfect trees for a hammock. In fact the site to the right of this photo was occupied by 2 guys who showed up and excusively slept in their hammocks and never set up a tent thanks to all the trees. 

Saturday afternoon. In some areas of the campground, flames did make it in and burned patches of trees. The problem at hand now is mud slides that have eliminated nearby trails and extra campsites up the hill.

Saturday afternoon. In some areas of the campground, flames did make it in and burned patches of trees. The problem at hand now is mud slides that have eliminated nearby trails and extra campsites up the hill.

Right after we made breakfast a friendly man drove up to us and told us about opening day for the visitor center. Live animals like this owl, a hawk , snakes and critters were on exhibit. We checked it out and talked to a few Ojai locals about the i…

Right after we made breakfast a friendly man drove up to us and told us about opening day for the visitor center. Live animals like this owl, a hawk , snakes and critters were on exhibit. We checked it out and talked to a few Ojai locals about the impact of the Thomas fire, how the center and campgrounds were miraculously saved by setting “back-fires” to surround the area and fight back the approaching wildfire. There was an REI CoOp booth and we had what I’d guess was a record breaking Jenga game (look how high that tower is!) and each won some REI steel cups. 

We didn’t do much, which was why we came camping. We drove into the outskirts of the town in order to get cell service for a few minutes for something and when we came back to our site we just read and laid around. It was perfect. 

We didn’t do much, which was why we came camping. We drove into the outskirts of the town in order to get cell service for a few minutes for something and when we came back to our site we just read and laid around. It was perfect. 

Weather was as good as it could get for camping - 80 during the peak of the day and in the mid-50s at night.  

Weather was as good as it could get for camping - 80 during the peak of the day and in the mid-50s at night.  

Philip Skinner
March
Long exposure in Ojai. what else would I write other than my Instagram name?

Long exposure in Ojai. what else would I write other than my Instagram name?

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Easter Sunday fog in Ojai 

Easter Sunday fog in Ojai 

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Ojai with Mia‘s family 

Ojai with Mia‘s family 

a reminder that LA can sometimes show seasonality 

a reminder that LA can sometimes show seasonality 

I found a parking garage up the street while scouting for better photo spots that is right behind the power plant. To me this is a picture one could just pick out things the more they look at it. 

I found a parking garage up the street while scouting for better photo spots that is right behind the power plant. To me this is a picture one could just pick out things the more they look at it. 

I thought I was the only one who knew about this little photo location but as I walked up somebody was giving a photography workshop and took up all the space. I used a puddle to get an interest photo and went somewhere else. 

I thought I was the only one who knew about this little photo location but as I walked up somebody was giving a photography workshop and took up all the space. I used a puddle to get an interest photo and went somewhere else. 

a couple blocks from home. I had no idea there were these pools behind the power plant 

a couple blocks from home. I had no idea there were these pools behind the power plant 

passing storm, visited the Huntington Library which I definitely am going to go back to for photos on a clear day, tried to repair holes in two wetsuits and successfully replaced the center console latch in my truck - this was causing a lot of probl…

passing storm, visited the Huntington Library which I definitely am going to go back to for photos on a clear day, tried to repair holes in two wetsuits and successfully replaced the center console latch in my truck - this was causing a lot of problems for a couple years and only cost $10. 

looking out the boat on a spring day

looking out the boat on a spring day

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Around the Ojai Valley Inn

Around the Ojai Valley Inn

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Philip Skinner