Here’s a photo gallery that includes all the albums and photos I’ve uploaded over time.  There are some beautiful, fascinating places out there! Enjoy!

For best viewing experience, click the full screen button in the upper right corner of the gallery: 

For those who prefer watching videos, I’ve got a few uploaded on Vimeo. Click here to view my channel.

I spent a couple of days at the PDN/WPPI show in NYC this week. As any good convention should be, I learned lots of great stuff, and had some good meetings with some of my vendors. Also got to meet in person several other photographers and industry ‘big wigs’ that I’ve gotten to know online.  These include Canon’s Chuck Westfall, Rick Sammons, Mark Wallace, Susan Roderick & Kenna Klosterman of Creative Live, Dennis of Cinevate, Shane Hurlbut, and Vincent Laforet.

Here are a few shots from Thursday and Friday.  Shane Hurlbut is a director of photography for many feature films, including Terminator Salvation and The Greatest Game Ever Played. He shot an upcoming movie, Act of Valor using Canon 5D mk IIs for about 80% of the movie. He’s also teamed up with Letus to create a new series of DSLR cinema rigs.  Got to demo the rigs with the president of Letus and Julien Lasseur from Hurlbut Visuals. The series of shots of the model were from a workshop I helped with at the Westcott booth, presented by Andy from Unknown Photographer. A few people wanted to see the final shots to compare notes on the strobe techniques Andy used.

I just spent two very quick, very busy days at the 2011 NAB show in Las Vegas.  As usual, there was tons to see and lots to learn.  Highlights for me were, in no particular order:

• Trying out the Angeneux Optimo lenses. Sadly, $50K for a lens is outside my budget for the time being.
• Seeing the Kessler Crane Revolution head and Orion controller in action.
• Getting hands-on with the Cinevate stuff.  Most of my current rig is made by Cinevate, so it’s great to see the rest of the product line first-hand.
• Getting an up-close look of the new Red Scarlet in action as it wandered around the show floor.

• Checking out a promising-looking new powered cage by ECC Tools at the Oconner booth.
• Trying out the Phantom Gold super high speed camera. Again, sadly $150K for a camera is outside my budget for the time being.
• Meeting Vincent Laforet, Dennis Wood of Cinevate, and Mitch Aunger of Planet5d.
• Lots of 4K eye candy by Christie, Panasonic, and others.

For those of you who haven’t seen my photos on facebook, or just want to be able to view them full-screen, here’s a gallery from my recent trip to Europe.  Photos are from a couple of towns north of Paris, the French and Swiss Alps in the haute savoie region, parts of the Rhone region of France, and from Prague in the Czech Republic.

Enjoy!

River Design began offering video services late last year, with significant investments in a professional rig. We’ve seen some early success with several projects already completed (I’ll be posting those soon), but I was most impressed with my recent experience with the iPhone.  While on vacation in France & Switzerland, I decided to whip out my iPhone and film a bit of the beautiful mountains while I was skiing.  I then did a quick edit in about 10 minutes and uploaded the resulting video to youtube.  All of it was done right on my phone.  It’s not a terribly professional result, but considering that the camera, editing and encoding package, and uploader all fit in about 1/5th of my pocket, I was pretty amazed.

Check it out for yourself:

And as a little bonus, here’s one I shot with my iPhone and the GoPro Hero, mounted to a chest strap.  I edited this one using iMovie on my laptop, so the result, while still far from professional, is a step up from what the iPhone can produce by itself:

The Mirage, Las Vegas

There are still a few days left in this rainy month, yet it seems like events at its beginning occurred ages ago.  This is the common result of a schedule so incredibly jammed packed that the passage of time takes on strange dimensions.  Let’s see… the beginning of the month found me in California, skiing for a couple of days and chillaxing on the beach.  The next weekend I was in New Hampshire, busy with all the best man stuff for my friend’s wedding.  The following Monday I flew to Las Vegas for the NAB show.  The only money I lost in Vegas was to some overpriced meals at the hotel; it’s great not being a gambler!  Then just this past weekend, I jetted out to Colorado on a last-minute whim to try out my new freestyle skis.  Apparently, I couldn’t have timed it any better, as 24 inches of fresh snow hit the mountains the day before I got there.  My first attempt was to ski A-Basin, but the pass leading to the mountain was closed, so I ended up at Loveland.  Powder was around my knees all day, and a couple times I burst waste-deep through drifts and ridges.  Definitely a treat and a great way to end the season.  Many thanks to Sarah Ong and her family for their hospitality on this quick, very last minute trip!

Somehow in the middle of all that, I managed to work the equivalent of nearly 5 weeks of full-time work.  I think I did most of my sleeping on airplanes.

Pictures say it better than words, so I uploaded a bunch in the gallery below…

I’ve been on some fairly hairy hikes in my life. Sometimes the adventure is in the company: coming face-to-face with Cassowaries in Australia or Black Bears in Yosemite. Sometimes it’s the weather: frigid autumn snow in New Hampshire’s Presidentials or stifling heat in Volcanos National Park.  Sometimes it’s in getting lost: trying to find Seiguera della Dei on the Amalfi Coast, or foolishly cutting switchbacks until I ended up bushwhacking through the dark in Yosemite.

But sometimes, it’s the path itself.  Half Dome in Yosemite and Stairway to Heaven in Hawaii are probably at the top for coolest and scariest experiences. The payoff is always the setting and the scenery.  But as you can see in the video below, I need to return to Spain to check out this part of Andalucia.  Agoraphobes beware!

My friend, Ben Hall, loving life at Bretton Woods

Hello, poor, neglected blog! Here’s a nifty little video I created from my mini ski trip up to New Hampshire and Vermont last week.  The timing for this trip couldn’t have been better.  Snow fell across much of the region for the 3 or 4 days prior to my trip, granting the rare New England treat of fresh powder.  Killington, as usual, claimed the most with 59 inches of fresh white fluffies!  As you can see in the video, I took advantage of the new snow by heading into the woods… a most enchanting experience when the world is made of white.  All told, I enjoyed three days of glorious skiing with some terrific friends.  Monday was Killington, VT.  Tuesday was Bretton Woods, NH.  Wednesday was Waterville Valley, NH.

Back here in CT, I found that by Friday it was already T-shirt weather! My crocuses are peeking out from the cadaverous ground of early spring. It’s amazing how quickly the context changes from spectacular winter wonderland to thoughts of golf… But I’ve got at least a couple of more skiing days left this year.  Mammoth Mountain, California still has two days with my name on it later this month. And I’m in talks with Catamount Ski Area in Massachusetts for a big web site project; and I see at least a few comp runs after a visit there perhaps next week.

Quintessential Squam

One of my favorite spots on planet earth is Squam Lake, New Hampshire.  Our family had a beautiful spot in Squaw Cove, way out in the quietest end of this already marvelously untouched lake.  Many of my childhood summer days were spent up at the lake.  Far from the drum beat of the rat race life, there were only three types of days at Squam: lake days (if it was hot and muggy), mountain days (if it was cooler and clear), and cabin days (if it was raining).  We cooked on a large, wood-fired, cast iron stove, played games around the huge dining table, read books in the alcoves by the fireplace, made “forts” in the loft, slept safely from the “wood bumpies” in our individual cabins, always swam before breakfast, sat wrapped in our towels in the warmth of the morning sun while Grandma brought wild blueberry pancakes down the path for breakfast on the dock, paddled the canoe out to Yard Islands, sailed out to the main lake, jumped off the diving rock in Rattlesnake Cove, played with cousins and friends in the woods, bicycled on the dirt roads, played on the deck til our hair turned blonde and our backs turned brown, earned our right to shed our life vests by swimming unaided across the cove, engaged in forever fascinating conversations with well-traveled, well-read family, listened to the hauntingly beautiful cries of the loon, and found ourselves all-too-quickly passing from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood.

You could hardly ask for a better setting to romp as a child, yet I found my appreciation for this magical place only matured as I saw it slip away. Many things changed for me as I left home for college.  Most of these were normal for a teen entering higher education.  Life in a dorm, far from home.  Increased responsibilities, freedoms, and opportunities.  I capitalized on as much as I could, spending my summers and spring breaks traveling, abandoning sleep during the rigors of the school year.  But while I was away filling my head and trotting around the globe, my roots in New Hampshire quietly slipped away.  During my senior year, my parents sold their house and moved to Connecticut.  The Brooks family lost their property on Squam when our property tax bill quintupled after a reassessment.  Nobody wanted to pay the equivalent of a brand-new luxury car each year for something that was only being used a few weeks each summer.  I was learning that the right to own private property is really a subtle myth.  You never actually “own” property.  You must continue to rent it from the government.

Fortunately, my grandfather’s sister was able to keep their spot around the point.  She married Oliver Butterworth who was best friends with my grandfather.  The Butterworth camp is a very similar setup with a main cabin that serves as the kitchen/living area and then several other cabins for sleeping.  Money raised in selling the Brooks camp to a land trust was used to create a fund that pays the property taxes on the Butterworth side.  So while we lost all the cabins that my dad, uncles, and grandparents built, I usually make it over to the Butterworth camp for a few days each summer.

As a guy who runs my own business, my life has become increasingly connected.  Computers, e-mail, laptop, iPhone… I’m never far from reach.  Squam, however, is just far enough off the beaten path.  No cell signals.  No e-mail, voice mail, or text messages.  It’s my one place to be completely unplugged.

Last week, my dad and I drove up to spend a few days with one of my uncles and a couple of my cousins.  Since returning from Europe, I’ve been engaged in a losing battle to catch up on work and life.  A busy trip to Oklahoma that resulted in a significant amount of new work has only added to the worries.  A big part of me knew that I had no business stopping now to take a few days off, but another part of me knew I really needed it.  I’ve enjoyed a lot of travel so far this year (6 trips in the last 7 months, 3 of those overseas), but none of my trips have been very relaxing.  The times in between have only been that much busier as I’ve had to make up for the time I’ve been away.  I needed a day or two to exhale.

And Squam is just the place for that.