Dallas, Ft.Worth and Dad

I suppose that my first facscination with photography came by way of my dad. He always had an eye for the art of the craft and while we lived overseas during my childhood, Dad was able to produce some amazing Kodachrome slides of my sisters and me in places like the Taj Mahal, Calcutta India and Khatmandu, Nepal.

His images impressed me then, and they still do today. Now in retirement, his camera is working again and he's still able to knock out some great images!

On a recent visit to the Dallas-Ft.Worth area where my dad lives, it was a lot of fun to take a few hours on two separate days to go shooting with him. We walked for miles all over downtown Dallas on a cold, overcast day, and then a few days later we hit up Ft. Worth.

It was fun to wander slowly, enjoy the architecture, style and history of two old (but new) cities, and let the eye wander to lines, doors, colors and other shapes that could make a cool image.

Following are a few of my favorites.

Near City Hall in Dallas is an old cemetary, many of the burial dates are in the 1800's. It's surrounded by city buildings, falling apart and a bit out of place, but made for some cool images!

North Carolina

This past week I had the pleasure of accompanying one of my athletes to Greensboro, North Carolina as he was competing in the National Championships of high school track and field. While there, we had a few extra hours to check out the surrounding North Carolina country side and universities. Here are a few pictures I took while there.



Duke University totally took me by surprise! I was not ready for it's gothic architecure and almost medieval look! Pretty in it's own way, the centerpiece of the campus was a large cathedral (the school was originally a Methodist institution) that looked like it was pulled from the 15th Century in France, yet I discovered was built between 1930 and '32! Here is one of the adjacent walkways



Greensboro's quaint, historic street. Fittingly named "Elm Street", it evoked a Normal Rockwell view of Americana!





The Duke University football stadium, it hosted the 1942 Rose Bowl as the US Government banned all large public events on the West Coast in fear of a Japanese attack. Since Duke was scheduled to play in the game, Duke University offered their stadium. Duke won!

Scenes from Portland

Recently I had a working weekend in Portland and had a couple of hours to walk around the downtown area and just enjoy the colors and architecture of the town. Portland is quite a place. The Fall colors were still accenting the buildings and block by block, it seemed another discovery was made.

A very pretty place, enjoy!




An outdoor bazaar brought out great colors and interesting people!





I've been experimenting with purposefully out-of-focus images to capture a more artistic rendition of the subject.





More deliberate blurrying ... almost becomes a watercolor!

Old School

Riverside Community College

Interior Design

Today I got to help my wife with photographing a couple of her recent projects for her Interior Design business. Wish I could show you the "before" images, but alas , I don't have them.

Enjoy HER work!

Cool Door

While shooting a portrait session recently, I saw this cool door. The house above it not so cool, but the door! Sweet!

San Diego Geometry

I never liked geometry in high school. The theorems were tough and I never quite got all those triangles and such.

I like it now -- not the memorizing of theorems, mind you -- but I like looking at geometry, especially in the form of architecture. Here are a few shapes from a recent trip to San Diego.






And if baseball isn't a game of geometry, I'm not sure what is. Beautiful Petco Park!

The Architecture of Disney

One of the many amazing things about Disney is their ability to appeal to a 5 year old and a 50 year old at the same time. When I visited Disney World a year ago, my daughter had a grand time, but so too did my wife and I. One of the things I loved was the design, both landscape and structure.

Here are a few images of their architectural creativity ... from recreation of Mann's Chinese Theater, to Victorian, to a retro amusement park, to a building seemingly stolen from a Westerner's view of Africa. Pretty cool stuff.

The Grand Floridian

One year ago this week, my wife, me and Mackenzie had one of our all-time great family vacations. We got to go to Disney World for four days, and just had a blast. Great spring weather, and a vacation that not only met the needs of a 7 year old, but also a couple of old folks (if early 40's is old).

Here's a photo project of the Grand Floridian, Disney World's showcase hotel and resort. We're living on Memory Lane this week!


And of the Wilderness Lodge, where we stayed.

Riverside County Courthouse

Here in Riverside we have a landmark building that serves as the County Courthouse and has been the set for a number of movies that need a 1920's feel. It's a very pretty building.

Riverside, Part Three