To keep going with the family theme, here’s a shot of my good friends Zio and Lavinia from when we were all hanging out at their house in Portland.

Marina, during a mushrooming trip to Salt Point State Park, a couple of hours north of San Francisco. Costume design by Mike Leyzerovich.

Marina and Laecee chatting at a friends’ wedding. From the same near-disasterous roll of film as this shot. This is also one of my favorite pictures from this past year.

A dramatic portrait of Sasha, a good friend of mine whom I’ve known since I was about 2 weeks old. It was a really foggy day and, with him standing at the entrance to an old tunnel I got a nice giant light source side-lighting his face.

Here’s another picture of him from the same roll of film.

Another photo from the Paradise Ridge Winery’s sculpture garden. From the same roll of film as this one.

Anna, posing in the sculpture garden at the Paradise Ridge Winery. Paradise Ridge is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best wineries in the Napa – Sonoma – Russian River Valley area. On top of excellent and not-outrageously-expensive wine they have a sizable sculpture garden with periodically changing exhibitions. We have been going there for something like three years now and have yet to be left unimpressed. If you’re there, me sure to try their reds from the Rockpile vineyard. To. Die. For.

Another portrait of Marina pretty much at the same time (and on the same hill-top) as the shot from a few days ago. One thing I absolutely love about photographing her is that she is an extremely versatile model – her looks can change on the turn of a dime, making it a challenge to keep up. A rewarding one. Here, she went from a fairy-tale-character to a 30′s Hollywood star in something like a minute, freezing her ass off the entire time we were there.

Last Sunday I was walking around Grand View Park in the Sunset district of San Francisco. Grand View is one of a few hill-parks in the area, it is a tiny space where you get to climb stairs (or a dirt road, depending which side you come from) to the top of a little hill and watch the sunset from the single bench at the summit. This time around, we didn’t get to see the sunset. It was foggy and raining. An interesting experience actually – I am quite used to driving from one climate to another, living in the Bay Area I get to do quite a bit of that, but this is the first time in a while that I walked something like 300 yards to a different climate. At the bottom of the hill, it was nice and calm. At the top, it was all fog, rain, and bitingly cold wind. I snapped a few shots quickly before Marina (my partner in crime) froze to death. I think this came across well in the photo – to me she looks like she came right out of a fairy tale of some sort, a sad and lonely one.

Spectacular place. We’ll be back.

I took this shot yesterday as a quick test of the Arista Premium (I’m about 99% sure that it’s repackaged Tri-X sold at a 50% discount) 400 pushed to 1600. I like it. A lot. Will be ordering me a couple of briks of it this week.

On a sad note, I lost the results of an entire photo-shoot this saturday to an old batch of Rodinal. Never again will I decide to wing it when I see that any of my chemicals changed color, no matter how slightly. The whole roll, which no doubt contained masterpieces, came out completely clear. Lesson learned.

Taken at the abandoned fortifications on the Northern side of the San Francisco bay. I will need to go back there the next time the weather is all gloomy and the light is nice and soft. Lots of potential for some really dramatic photographs in those places. That would also give me a good excuse to really play with my DIY beauty dish I made a few months ago.