Friday, November 9th, the Woosley fire already began moving through the mountains above Malibu. The massive black smoke cloud was visible from Redondo Beach, the offshore Santa Ana winds were pushing the plume out over the ocean. Meanwhile, the Camp fire up north was tearing through towns and causing poor air quality because the smoke was blanketing the entire Bay Area. Over the next week, the Bay Area air got worse and the fires turned deadly. The photos below are from Friday night, I was at the Redondo breakwall using the 300mm lens on a tripod. Long exposures capture the flight paths of airplanes and helicopters, but also the crazy walls of fire moving towards the coast and taking out homes on the way. Malibu was evacuated, but some people were able to get back in the very next day and stayed to protect their property. By Monday, I donated some items in need to Dive N Surf up the street, because they planned to stock up the Body Glove boats in the harbor and ferry supplies up to a cove and to the people who were staying in Pt Dume. A few posts ago I had pictures of our friend, Molly, her birthday party in Malibu. Her brother was one of the people who got back in and they used their house as a make-shift base camp during the coming week. Really crazy stuff and really sad destruction.

Everyone was relying on time to basically bring changing weather and eventually rain. A week after the fires began our friend group met up in Big Bear for Friendsgiving - a weekend of relaxing - much needed for a few of our friends whose family homes are in Malibu. Two days later, a small rain system finally arrived, as I arrived up in Antioch for thanksgiving. Within 1 day it went from lung-burning, smoke-filled skies to crisp and clear air thanks to the rain and cold wind. I was lucky I got to see my family and spend a few days up there. Took a hike with Dante at Black Diamond Mines park, it was just after hours of rain so we were walking on a fire trail with about 10lbs of mud stuck to our shoes. It’s fun though because he's a photographer, too, so we took opportunities for pictures and I was trying to get creative and moody (photos below).

I got up to San Luis Obispo twice for back-to-back weekends. The first occasion was to celebrate October Birthdays, this included some time at the horses and a new-to-me hike in SLO. Mia got back on the saddle of her horse, George, to show his manner and perhaps have a new owner take over his care - a perfect match due to the limited time he gets ridden currently. 

The second weekend was for a trip we’ve talked about for years. My mom made the drive down to Paso Robles and we all met up to go wine tasting. The biggest highlight was a private tour through Steinbeck Vineyards on a 1958 Jeep by the 80-year old owner of the land. It felt special to get a history lesson from Howie as he cruised through the land and stopped for us to try different grapes. We also visited Scuplterrea which as the name may give away, has a some sculptures (Lots of photos below).

Tulum, which is a 2-hour drive south of Cancun on the Eastern coastline of Mexico, was a special place to our friends Leif and Lily (L&L for short). They chose to have their wedding there and invited tons of friends and family from around the world. Mia and I fortunately were able to go a couple days prior to most guests arrival and had a brief vacation at a hotel called, Mi Amor. We showed up around 3pm from a full day of travel and the only room left was unoccupied because the AC unit was being replaced, but still in progress. Fortunately it seemed to be the room with the best balcony and view of the ocean. We waited happily with some complimentary beverages and food while unwinding from the flying and driving to get to Tulum. All was good, the next day we rode bikes to the Mayan Ruins in Tulum, which was impressive to see, although it was a tourist-heavy place. The days go by quick in Tulum. You wake up, each hotel we saw has really cool healthy restaurants and exclusive beach areas for their guests, for relaxation without enormous resorts, this is probably the easiest and coolest town to be in. Historically, Tulum began it’s popularity by being a yoga retreat town. That vibe still exists, but it also has a surf-town main road of restaurants, bars, clubs, shops, and spas. The water feels about 80 degrees and yes the seaweed is famously a problem there, people spend all day trying to clean up the beaches only to start all over again the next day.

The wedding was essentially a 3-day long, super mellow hang out between 70 friends and family. Most hotels have between 12-20 rooms, and our closest friends occupied all of them at Sanara where the wedding took place, so people we knew were everywhere all the time, it was a ton of fun.

Disclaimer - the humidity, abundant sand everywhere, and my constant state of mild intoxication were factors influencing me not to have had my camera out a lot, so below is what I did photograph plus a couple of iPhone photos from friends.

From the end of July through September, there have been so many little trips and gatherings that I wanted to put on my blog. The photos below are from various activities through the end of summer. I was able to accept an opportunity for a new job, a pivot from what I’ve been doing over 9 years and able to (hopefully) grow many more career benefiting qualities while applying my experience to help others. With the job change, I took a week off and visited family in the Bay Area, that’s where the park playground activities took place. We got to celebrate a birthday for our friend Molly in Malibu with almost all of the attendees wearing blue and walking out to Pt Dume. Mia’s college roommate Laura and her husband Shaun and their black lab met up with us for breakfast and some chill time in El Segundo at a park. I bought a used longboard designed in a way that I’ve been wanting for a long time, to re-learn surfing in the longboard, nose riding style. I got to go to Half Moon Bay and walk around town and the Ritz golf course with my mom as an escape from the summer heat inland. There was a quick trip to SLO and I finally tried some long-exposure beach shots. There was another special birthday for our friend Kait which was celebrated at a rental house in Carpenteria right on the sand. Then, for my first week of work at the new company, I got to travel to Denver to their headquarters. I was able to arrive Sunday afternoon and walked around downtown, which is super cool and photogenic with perfect summer heat-wave weather. As you can probably tell, there’s been a lot going on. Hope you enjoy the wrap up in pictures.

We got to go to a wedding for a friend, Caroline (picture below with the dogs) which was in Cape Cod, MA. We were even luckier that we had a couple days off to extend the trip and hang out with Nick & Jen in Boston (again, we visiting a year ago). We took a red-eye which was dragging us down a little upon arrival until we started to meet up with friends - it was a great crew attending this wedding - and the celebrations lasted for 2 straight days. Cape Cod is a wonderful place, especially in the summer. The town was old and the houses were huge, the beaches were very different from Southern California (trucked-in sand, lots of open space), and most things about the time there were charming and fun. The day after the wedding we drove back to Boston with Kait and Kevin, stopped in Plymouth for food - and as the hangovers wained we reached Nick and Jen’s place. They took us to the waterfront on the Charles for sunset and enjoyed a local beer / home-baked bread picnic on the docks. It was picture perfect. That night Nick and Jen taught us all about mezcal from their recent trip to Oaxaca, and unknowingly convinced me that I need to go. We all sampled mezcal from their trip and caught up. They took us up to a lake north-west of Boston before our flight back to LA the next day.

Now, a month later, I’m still processing some of the activities and fun that was able to be packed into about 3.5 half days.

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.

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?

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. 

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. 

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.