Tag Archives: portraits

Costa Rica November 2011

November 23, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I spent two weeks in November attending a Spanish language school in Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica. DON’T ask or expect me to bust out any espanol — YET. I’ll need another dose.

Here are a few pictures of some of my friends and classmates surfing at Tamarindo Beach (and some random beach bum types. It may be difficult to discern which are which.)

There’s a town in Costa Rica that’s famous for its pottery (ceramicas). The story is that these families have been making it there for 500 years or so, using pretty much the same materials, designs and methods. I met a guy named (disappointingly) “Willy,” who demonstrated his craft. I wound up flying home with seven pieces of pottery in my luggage. Amusingly, I also wound up giving a multimedia show-and-tell presentation (in Spanish, of course) to the entire school, describing my visit to Guaitil .

Here are some random Costa Rican sunsets from the trip.

Cowboy James in Moab

November 6, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I had a little bit of landscape fatigue after four days at the Moab workshop, so for about 20 minutes I wandered over to the “ranch” next to the lodge where we were staying. I met James, who had worked there as a wrangler/outfitter most of his life. When James isn’t taking Japanese tourists on dude-ranch style outings along the Colorado River, he’s doing the real cowboy work of taking care of the horses. He never stood still, but I got some decent shots.

(Photo nerds: I used an off-camera flash on the ground in a small Lastolite softbox to get a little light up under that hat.)

Moab Photography Workshop

November 5, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

As this site surely implies, in the past year I’ve resumed one of my teen-years hobbies: photography. My skills may not have advanced much in the last 25 years, but the capabilities of modern cameras are indistinguishable from magic.

I was privileged to be a part of the last-ever Digital Landscape Workshop, led by a couple of famous photographers: Moose Peterson and Joe McNally. Google them — or take a look at www.moosepeterson.com or www.joemcnally.com. Those guys rock. And they really know their, uh, stuff. So for 15 hours a day, I tried to soak up as much as I could. As much as anything, I learned that I have much to learn. Here are some of my pictures from the workshop.

_JJC7052 Happy Couple on Double Arch Rocks.jpg

_JJC7088 Girl walking under double arch.jpg

Moose also has an aviation photography website: www.warbirdimages.com. Two other instructors (the longtime right-hand-men for Joe and Moose, respectively, have photography websites at www.drewgurian.com and www.chasingthelight.com.

A few friends from the workshop have their pictures online here, http://www.fifty-twopeople.blogspot.com/ (Dan) and here, http://www.flickr.com/photos/indyfan31/ (Fausto) and here http://www.dbpazianphotography.com/ (Barry). Here’s a picture Fausto took on the last day of the workshop. I’m sure he considers it the masterpiece of his lifetime — attributable primarily to the impromptu model.

Finally, here are “portraits” I took of Moose (with the moustache) and Joe (in glasses). They were kind enough to dedicate a good 20 seconds each to posing for these.

Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race 2011

August 15, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

First, you should know that less than a year ago, neither I nor any of my friends rode mountain bikes. And you should know that the Leadville 100 is perhaps the most “epic” mountain bike race in the U.S. Lance Armstrong won it a couple of years back. It’s a 100 miles, and it starts at 10,000 ft. elevation. And when I tried to ride just a portion of the course, there was a five-mile stretch during which I crashed (hard) three separate times (to say nothing of the thin-air climbs up bumpy trails).

There’s a lottery to get in, and Shane and Ned wound up getting “slots” in this year’s race; for better or worse (almost certainly better), I didn’t. They trained like crazy, especially Ned, who spent about six consecutive weekends in Colorado (ask him about the oxygen tent over his bed in Houston – no kidding). They both rocked it! At least I got to tag along, drive the chase car and take pictures.

Oh: And it all took place on my birthday. So I got a nice present from the gang — a Payday (candybar). Long story.

Alaska with Joyce and J.B.

June 29, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

My first post-retirement priority was to take a trip with my Mom and Dad. Most Alaska tourists apparently spend their time on cruise ships. I had raised this option with my Dad. Predictably, his response to the cruise ship idea included a good bit of profantity and the word “prison.” So we flew to Anchorage in mid-June, rented an SUV, and for two weeks traveled the majority of the relatively-few roads that exist in that section of Alaska.

Along the way, we chartered a small boat for a private glacier cruise, took a horseback ride in the Kenai peninsula, took a ‘flightseeing’ plane trip to McKinley (including a landing on the Glacier), and spent a day on those terrible old school buses that are the only way to actually go into Denali National Park.

If you get off the tourist-beaten path, you can really have the place to yourself. One day, for example, we drove into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park — the largest national park in U.S. at 13 million acres. There are only two roads in, so we picked one and drove 2 hours, which was as far as you could go in a vehicle. In that time, we saw maybe one or two other cars of sightseers. Meanwhile, most of the visitors to Alaska were sharing a boat with 2,000 other tourists, or at best sharing bus with 40. I think my Dad was right.