I just started adding photos on the Microstock sites again recently. Now having a little tabletop shooting area at home I've been making pictures with some props I found at the local charity shop. This is one of the new shots I enjoyed creating and I think will do OK on iStockphoto and Shutterstock.... the safe is actually some kind of promotional giveaway in plastic but looks satisfyingly solid here.

These were created for the APA Company, an interior design firm in Seattle. The APA Company site uses a mixture of these processed images along with the original photographs of their recent interior design projects.

Not really my area but occasionally get to work on packaging design projects which is fun.

On the left is a box design I did recently new brand of Organic Noni Juice for the European market. The Illustration of the cut and whole Noni fruit, along with the palm trees, large leaf was done by my old friend and super Illustrator Jack Coffey in Albuquerque.

I'm getting comfortable with the whole Noni thing... a couple more sites I've done recently www.noni-select.com and www.organic-noni.com.

At least once a week I like to just walk around town with my camera and no particular agenda.  I'm starting to build up a nice little collection of local pictures this way.  Here's one I like shot through a spiderweb of utility wires showing downtown, elevated freeways etc. from Portrero Hill.

I recently shot some décor and environment pictures at the St.Francis in Union Square for my fomer colleagues at TBA Global.

I have been surviving without a real wide-angle lens for a while and relying on the fairly generous big-end of my trusty Nikon 18-200mm VR. Although I maintain a mental shopping-list of photographic gear that excites me I just can't feel it for wide-angles and I've been loath to spend the money on something that doesn't seem fun. However I've been shooting more event venues recently and I had to address the gap. I had owned a previous verion of the Sigma DX wide-zoom which was great but I was persuaded to save a few quid and go with a Tokina by this Ken Rockwell comparison test. Not the most glamorous brand but so far so good. Not all Nikon fans are enthused by Mr. Rockwell's style or opinions but I find he's usually more or less right.

The Tokina....AF ATX 12-24mm/4.0 PRO DX....damn these lens names, they should just call them "eagle" or "rabbit" like cars...feels good and seems to take nice pictures. Best of all it's supported by the super-geeky DXO Optics Pro application which I'm currently playing around with.

Below is a shot of the Westin St. Francis ballroom which came out pretty well.

Last week I had a second photo shoot with Shalonda Smith who aside from being a really cool person is also a very talented musician. Shalonda is a Marimbalist (a new one for me) in other words a Marimba player. One who makes some really catchy, feel-good music which is pretty hard to categorize. I hear all sorts of musical influences.. a little Cure, perhaps some Cocteau Twins among others. There are a couple of tracks that have been stuck in my head, I'm looking forward to her self-released album which will be out soon.

The other week I shot pictures of my buddy Ryan.. AKA Duserock doing a DJ gig at a club in North Beach. This was mainy a chance to play around with a couple of external flashes triggered from a distance with the built in flash on the D200. This should work even better since the acquisition of a second SB-800 flash this week.

I got to visit Point Reyes this past weekend where I lived between 2004 and 2006.  It's been a while since I've been back.  Below is a grove of Aspens in a marsh on the Laguna trail, shot just after sunset.

Last week I shot pictures of portfolio pieces for a San Francisco designer Julian Honoré. Julian has a great style that is a natural evolution of Adobe-Illustrator driven diagrams and abstract mechanical images that used to the be the lifeblood of Wired magazine in it's heyday. Appropriately he's been doing some nice work for Make Magazine and Ready-Made.
He has a new portfolio site currently under construction at www.p4rse.com.

My friend Nick Giacomini who is co-owner of the excellent Yoga Toes studio in Point Reyes is performing this weekend at the yoga journal conference in the guise of MC Yogi. Nick is, as far as I'm aware, pretty much the only Hip-Hop yogi around. Nick is currently in the studio working on an album which I hear is coming along nicely. I was happy to see that Nick put together various pics we shot in my old Livery stable space to make this Shiva yogi flyer. I have quite a few shots of Nick that I'm eventually going to post when I get around to putting up a dedicated yoga gallery.