San Francisco

Angel Island is a California State Park in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. It has incredible views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the city of San Francisco and Alcatraz. In a previous post, I made a day trip there but this post is about spending the night on Angel Island. Depending on the season, the last ferry leaves the island between 3:30 and 5:20pm (make sure to check the schedule online) and unless you have your own boat that’s your deadline. But for a few hard core planners, it’s possible to secure a camping spot on Angel Island. In that case you will be sharing the island with at most 40 persons (including the park rangers, the kayak groups, and the large camping group). After the departure of the last ferry (which was 3:30pm in our case), the...

A couple weeks ago, I was invited to take part of a collective photo shoot in an equestrian farm in Sonoma Valley. It was the first photo shoot of a group called: The collective model. The idea behind the collective is to have a group of talented models, make-up artists and photographers who get together to help each other out. Nobody gets paid (except maybe the location) and everyone benefits from the shoot. Everyone gets new images for their portfolio. For this first shoot, the location was a farm in Sonoma Valley, where we had access to horses, stables and rings. There were 5 models (Taylor, Brian, Debbie, Yuliya and Russo) and one other photographer plus myself. After a quick introduction and walk around the property, we got to work. It was a very fluid...

The year is almost over and it’s time to look back at my work for 2013. From a pure statistical perspective, 2013 has been my most productive year ever. Probably due to the fact that I have traveled the most (76 days of travel and 7 countries). All the images presented here are available for licensing or as fine art prints.

The full moon this month was going to rise right above Alcatraz and then set above the south tower of the Golden Gate bridge. It meant waking up before 5am to catch the moon setting and then later that day going back to San Francisco to photograph the moon rising above Alcatraz around sunset time. The moon is exactly aligned with the top of the tower only for a very quick instant. I did my best to “guestimate” where I should be (which means a bit of running with a 400mm lens, a heavy tripod and camera). While I was doing my “guestimation”, clouds were blocking the moon on and off. At the last minute, literally, the clouds opened up, I took three shots and the moon was gone for ever behind clouds. Here are two of those shots: That same...

Last weekend I joined Frederic Larson’s meetup in Napa to photograph hot air balloons. The balloons are flying almost daily over Napa but on a nice weekend, you can have as many as 10 balloons in the air at the same time. Meetups are a great way to do things you would not otherwise think of doing. My favorite quote from Frederic is: “If you don’t change something, how could you expect different results”. My interpretation is: if you always wake up at the same time, you will always end up with the same photographs. Change you wake up time and see something different. So for this meetup, we woke up at 4:30am, in order to be in Youtville by 6:45am. From there, we carpooled to the launching spot where a fair number of balloons where already...

The 34th America’s cup was the longest on record both in racing days, and the number of races, with the Oracle Team USA staging an improbable come-from-behind victory, winning eight races in a row to defend the Cup with nine points to New Zealand’s eight. Now that I had the time to look back at those images that includes the America’s Cup world series in August 2012, the Louis Vuitton Cup (won by Emirates Team New Zealand) and the 34th America’s cup itself. Here my favorites: 1 2 ... 4 ► All the images presented here are available for licensing or as fine art...