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Friday evening, my wife and I went to see the exhibit of Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz island. We choose the evening tour because it let us combine the exhibit and an a photoshoot of the city with the Christmas light from Alcatraz. The tour boat left at 3:20pm with plenty of time for looking at the exhibit before the sunset at 4:51pm. December is the best month to go to Alcatraz to photograph the city’s christmas lights. It’s a unique vintage point and relatively close. I love doing panorama of the city while there. You need to sign up...

A common question I get is: What is Burning Man? It’s a very difficult question to answer because everyone has a different answer of what Burning Man is for him or her (even if he/she has never been to Burning Man). So rather than trying to describe Burning Man in general, I’m going to answer a couple of common questions I get every time. Disclaimer: this is my view of Burning Man. Why do I go to Burning Man? If you search or read news articles about Burning Man, you will find that it is a festival in the Nevada desert where young...

If you don’t know, my family comes from the Pyrenees region. A small town on the road to the Tourmalet pass (for you cyclists). A couple weeks ago, I spent a week there to see my family and I took a couple pictures. I did not take that many pictures because I was, one, busy visiting my family and two, the weather was not cooperating and three my brother, who lives there and is a professional photographer, has better images anyway. Lourdes is a town known for the apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1858. Since that time,...

Tonight I went out to take pictures of the full moon. I have always wanted an image of the Hoover tower that is on Stanford campus. After studying the campus map, I came up with only one potential good location but there was no parking nearby and if you know the Stanford campus, it’s pretty hard to park. I found a parking spot almost 1 mile away but I figured that with enough time I would be able to walk to my location in time. I did not know that the path I was planning on using is closed for renovation and the bridge over the San...

This blog is now 2 years old. Time flies when you are having fun. Honestly it started as an experience for sharing some of my images more quickly. I’m not a writer at all, but somehow I kept updating my blog. Thanks in no small part to my wife, who is spellchecking each and every one of my posts. Overall it’s a success, I wrote 78 (including this one) posts which is way more than I had even dreamed of. As a thank to you my reader, I would like to give you my favorite image of 2014 in high resolution (3440×1280) for your own...

Depending of whom you ask, dust at Burning Man is a curse or a blessing. It’s a curse because when the wind is picking up, a dust storm can be really strong and makes your life miserable. You will get playa dust everywhere: in your eyes (invest in goggles), on your hair/body/clothes, inside your RV (or tent), inside your cooler, inside your engine (what! oh yes), inside your camera gear. For others (myself included), I love dust and dust storms. I cannot wait for the first strong dust storm, I literally run in the dust storm with my...

This year for the 4th of July, we did not want to drive a lot but we were still looking for an camping trip. We looked at several possible options but they were all booked (some booked over a year in advance). My wife got the idea to check out Pinnacles National Park. It’s so close to the Bay Area that you can drive to it in less than 2 hours (excluding traffic). Pinnacles is known as a climbing mecca (in winter months), for its California condors and for the large bat population living in the caves. We were expecting a lot of people...

This year was marked by weather perturbations. Twice during the building weeks, the city and construction were halted by rain and/or hail, creating delays in building the man or the temple. The man was finished Monday at 5pm and the Temple was opened Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. It’s not unusual to have the Man or the Temple unfinished by the time the city gate opens. A Monday morning rainstorm has shutdown the city once again but this time during the arrival. The rain transformed the city in a muddy pit and all traffic...

It’s this time of year! By the time you will read this post, I will be driving to the Black Rock City to Burning Man. If you want to see what the drive is, here a time lapse video I made last year while we drove. [vimeo vimeo.com/73748066 w=880] Burning Man is a massive self-reliance art festival in the Nevada high desert. This year event is completely sold out with 68000 people expected. The idea of Burning Man is to be able to dedicate yourself to the spirit of community, art, and self-expression. If you have not seen my pictures...

Monks are very present in Myanmar, there are between 400,000 and 500,000 professional monks in a country of about 50 million people. Our photo leader (Tuan) had arranged that we could photograph some young monks (called novices) during an entire afternoon.  Monks rise very early for the alms offering and then have their lunch quite early (around 11am). Since we went and photograph the sunrise that morning, we went to visit a monastery right before their lunch. Monks raised at the monastery were, I guessed, between the age of 5 to 12....