I’ve been wanting to write a blog post of my favorite 10 photos of 2010. This process has taken me so long because it’s so hard to choose. I took thousands of photos last year, and posted most of them. Generally my process goes something like; Take photos, upload photos, flag favorites, go through and “correct” them, post them to Flickr. This is not based on stats or anyone elses opinion – it’s simply the photos I like the most. I like most of them for different reasons which I’ll try to explain.

Sacre Coeur, Paris, France. December 2010: Sean McCullough’s Canon EOS 7D.
I love playing with perspective. This photo was taken from below the Juggler so the whole church would fit inside the ball balanced on his head.

Mama Racha, Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires. April 28, 2010 with My Nikon D90
I don’t often snap candids of people I don’t know but this woman just needed her photo to be taken. I love the lighting, depth of field and of course the character.

Sydney Fleischer, Mt Baker, Washington. August 6, 2010. Nikon D90

Sometimes you get lucky with lighting, this was one of those times. I wish I could claim that I told Syd which way to look and how to tilt her head, but this photo was just good timing with a fortunate perspective.

Sean McCullough and Friend, San Francisco. October 9, 2010. Nikon D90

Sean looked over at just the right time and has good camera reflexes. Snap quick enough and you get a true smile. Take your time and you’ve lost the moment.

Claire and Drew, Bariloche, Argentina. April 25, 2010. Nikon D90
Can’t beat the background. Can’t beat the smiles. I was happy with the blacks/ contrast, and the cool colors being highlighted in post.

Claire and Deirdre, Mt Baker, Washington. August 7, 2010
Hard to get it wrong when your subjects are so beautiful. I wasn’t the main photographer, I was just looking for good candids. The brightness of the background allowed me to play with the contrast a bunch.

Ken and Sarah, Redwood City. May 15, 2010. Nikon D90
Because the venue was so intimate, I found myself shooting from further away than normal. I often had to shoot around, over, or between people. This came in handy for this particular shot. People dance around them while they take a moment to kiss.

Matt, Kevin, Mike and Josh, Claremont, CA. May 29, 2010. Nikon D90
I love how the light plays off the water in this photo. The colors are striking and the focus is crisp. I love that this photo was taken from water level.

Fleet Week, San Francisco, CA. October 9, 2010. Nikon D90
This is a perspective that you don’t have the opportunity to shoot very often. It’s one thing to be at a SF rooftop party – It’s another to be right above one.

Montmartre, Paris, France. December 8, 2010. Sean’s Canon EOS 7D
Montmartre is one of my favorite areas in all of Paris. Sean and I were lucky enough to catch a warm day after a cold snowy night.

Montmartre, Paris, France. December 8, 2010. Sean’s Canon EOS 7D
The contrast of colors is amazing in this photo. I’ve really enjoyed shooting photos with a wide angle lens this year, it’s amazing how much you can fit into a single shot.

As always I’d love for you to sign up for my e-mail list – I’m trying to grow my subscriber base pretty significantly from 5 to 500 in the next few months. You’re help would be appreciated.

October 12, 1998 – November 22, 2010

I just drove my 12 year old Jetta for the last time. I drove it 2 blocks to where it would be towed then donated to KQED. I never thought I would have been so emotionally attached to a car, but looking back over the years it’s no wonder this process has been tough. I got the Jetta handed down to me by my mom around January 2000. I don’t remember the day specifically but I do remember being so excited to drive it. That excitement stayed with me all 10 years I owned it. I was always proud to be the captain of that car even when two of its windows stopped rolling down, the CD player stopped working, the tape deck stopped turning, then the new stereo was stolen. None of that was the Jettas fault (and we put Sharky our pet shark who watches over the car in too late). The Jetta just wanted to get us from one place to another.

176,500 miles is a lot of distance to have memories of. They aren’t all mine but I’ll share the memories I have that coincide with photos I’ve recently come across. If you have any memories of the Jetta that you would like to share, I’d love to see them in the comments.

Traffic somewhere between LA and New Mexico. We get out of the car and make friends with a truck driver. The CD player worked at this point, thus Steve is choosing good “standing on the freeway” music. Note my ridiculously long hair. That night I slept with the back seat down, feet stretched into the trunk which we had cleared out.

The time I fell asleep behind the wheel with a big rig heading straight toward us. The guys thought it would be a good idea to grab a quick photo before waking me up. I’m glad they did. Date?

Surfs Up! Pink giant surfboard coming out of the sun roof, blue giant surfboard had to be held. Trunk open for good measure. Date?

The Jetta parked in front of our first apartment in San Francisco. Circa 2005.

The Jetta freezing it’s hubcaps off in the greater Tahoe area. This photo comes with a video.
The video that comes with the last photo.

I drove to and from the Bay Area a lot with the Jetta. This time was with Thom Smith on our way to “Beware O the Sombrero”, an ultimate tournament in the South Bay. I believe we were listening to AC/DC?

In college Steve and Drew would have been two of the more frequent riders of the Jetta. Both putting in their time in the back seat. Steve driving a bit and Drew doing his best to stay awake while I drove through the dark of the night.

It’s fitting that this next video be put in this post. It’s probably the video with the most Jetta exposure even though it’s a video I made to win a Ford Fiesta for 7 months. The car that ended up replacing the Jetta.

It’s no surprise that Claire would be sad to see the Jetta go. Claire easily put the second most amount of time spent in this car. Together we drove up and down the West Coast. The Jetta kept us warm, safe, and took us everywhere we asked it to. We’ll remember all the ultimate tournaments we went to in it, the times we went camping, or took it a bit more off road then it would have wanted. It drove us up and down the hills of San Francisco, through the Grapevine connecting Northern California to Southern, and through both Shasta and Tahoe. This car was ours through and through and we love it.

Thanks for being you Jetta, you’re the best!

More photos of the Jetta can be found here.

If you have stories or photos you’d like to share we’d love to see them in the comments.

It’s been a while since I had a good road trip. Now in the last week and a half I’ve gone to Seattle and back. I’m not a short guy so you’d assume that sitting in a car for 12 hours with 3 other humans and one dog wouldn’t be my idea of a great time. Well you would think wrong. Seriously, get with it. The ladies are beautiful and dear to my heart, and Skip (who’s even taller then me) makes sure everyone is always having fun.

What do you do for 10 – 12 hours in a car? You catch up. You make sure you know everything that’s going on in everyone’s life. You brainstorm amazing business ideas – and most of all you laugh until your cheeks hurt. You can also snuggle with the dog – she likes that.

There are some great books out there about road tripping and traveling out on the open road. It’s no secret that it’s one of Americas favorite pastimes – and we were basically the family version of “Travels with Charlie” (honestly I don’t remember a damned thing about Travels with Charlie; I assure you I read the book though). For me the appeal is getting out of the city and urban sprawl, and eventually hitting the golden rolling hills of California, the climb into Mount Shasta (somehow I always miss the meat bonanza in Shasta City) then the green valleys and lush trees of Oregon. Eventually entering a city that is nothing like the one I live in. I love when it’s a little warm and you can drive with the windows down, the music up, and you sing at the top of your lungs. That’s a road trip.

It seems to be in my blood. I remember traveling time and time again with my dad from LA to the bay area. My dad was so good at keeping me occupied on the trip up. We sang, I would draw, he once even let me plug my piano keyboard into the car stereo to pound out some tunes. As I get older I definitely take note of becoming sore after staying in the car for to long. I also feel bloated. When we came back from Seattle I instantly wanted to go to the gym (so I did). I’m also very conscientious about my environmental impact. I remember reading once how much prehistoric energy from the growth of forests, the perfect circumstances of decomposition with added pressure and heat in the earth that it takes to create oil. Then the massive amount of work and energy it takes to pull the fossil fuel from our earth (at least this is how I remember it : “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery). Then we burn it without a thought. This is hard for me to swallow.

So as I grow older I find myself considering new things about the road trip. How long am I able to stay in a car before I want to jump out. Could I even jump out once my legs have cramped up? How much gas am I using and what effect will it have on our planet? Should I stop at the black bear diner for a milkshake or will that just add to the bloated feeling? These seem to be things that I’ll have to keep considering as time continues to push forward. In the meantime I’ll reminisce on the trip to Seattle and Back. The first one with 1 (and only) wife, 2 friends and a dog. The second with 1 (same one) wife, and one great friend. It really felt good to be on the road again.

Every year I film at Le Web in order to make the conference promo video. Everything I shoot is with that one video in mind. But every now and then if the footage is just right I can squeeze another video or two out of it. This year with Gary Vaynerchuk and his great stage presence I was able to pull off one of these “extra” videos. The video is a little crazy to watch because I keep the camera rolling for sound bites as I move around, but I tried to clean it up a bit. And it’s ok to show it to the kids, it’s censored.

If you’re interested in watching the video I made for last years Le Web, it’s here.

I made a video for my wife Claire, but when I started she was my fience, and when I came up with the idea we weren’t even engaged yet. My point is the process was quite long. Even before it mattered weather or not I had the idea I had begun filming our life together. I guess this is a product of a lifetime of filming, starting with VHS and ending with digital video. More then anything its a love for capturing moments of my life and recreating them to make people smile, and to keep the memory alive.

Claire and I have been together for over 7 years, and I have footage from every year. Because of the advancement in technology in the last 7 years I’ve been able to save most of the videos I’ve shot on hard drives, the trick has just been tracking them down. I could do a whole other post on the difficulty of keeping all of your media accessible, and even another post on the advancement of digital media and the headache of transferring video into one unified format – that’s for another day.

In the back of my mind was this idea that whenever I was to ask Claire to marry me I would then start editing a video that I would surprise her with at our wedding. Here alone was the biggest difficulty. It is not easy to keep a secret from the person who knows you best, that you live with, that you share everything with. I spent hours tracking down old hard drives, finding old footage on tape, recapturing, and formatting – not to mention the time looking for music and editing. I had kept a journal near me during the whole process taking notes whenever they came to mind – Luckily, having an idea journal near me is normal and was never questioned by Claire. This is where I would write down scenes I envisioned, songs that I could use, and extra footage that I remembered existed somewhere.

I can’t lie and say this video was just for Claire. In end all that really mattered is that she enjoyed it, but when I was making it I had heaps of other people in mind. Obviously I wanted my friends to like it too. The real trick was making a video that could be enjoyed by anyone. The best I could do was to tell the story of the last 7 years of our lives together, the adventures we’ve gone on, the time we’ve spent with our friends, the beautiful city we live in, and our family whom we love.

While the video may have taken me a long time to produce, it was fairly easy with such a good subject to work with. Obviously this video is dedicated to my best friend and love of my life, Claire.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it.

Now for some notes, and extras for you.

Music in the order in which it was played.

Happy by NeverShoutNever!
“17 years” by Ratatat
“Land Down Under” by Men at Work
“Great Unknown” by Watercolor
- Trying to track it down – (the Church video)
“La Del Ruso” by Gotan Project
“Scenic World” by beirut
“You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson

These are links to full videos that had clips in Claire’s video. Not everything was online, but this is a pretty good start.

The Church
Land Down Under
My Day in Under a Minute
New Years/ Birthday Haircut
A Fast Week
Paganello 2007

Thomas and I won a Ford Fiesta for 6 months! We’re not exactly sure what that means at this point – What we do know is that we’ll be heading down to LA on the 19th in order to pick up the car. Now the question that is in your head is likely to be, what color car are you two getting? Well I’m glad I thought you might ask that. The color options for the “Ford Agents”, as they call us, were Black, Silver, Lime Green and Magenta. Because Thomas and I couldn’t have won the car without the help of so many people, we decided to leave that decision in the hands of said people.

Obviously they choose lime green…
So yes, we’ll be driving a lime green Ford Fiesta for 6 months, being agents, doing missions – Again, that is all I know.

The agent web page is up on the Fiesta Movement web site, and if you’d like to see our bio that was written by the beautiful and talented Giselle Kennedy, you should go here.

If you have no idea what i’m talking about because you’ve been hiding under a rock or have a dial-up connection, watch this (unless you have dial-up, you should just turn off your computer and read a book).

As the missions begin we’ll be posting a lot of content, probably here, on my flickr account, on facebook or friendster (j/k), youtube, and of course tweeting the bajesus out of it all on Twitter using the new Seesmic Desktop Client! <- That post to come soon.

See you on the road!

About 2 weeks ago my coworker Thomas Knoll and I were sent a forward from our boss who had received an e-mail from Julia Roy about the Fiesta Movement. (I love when my blog posts start with sentences like, “my fiance’s sisters boyfriends sister works for the Golden State Warriors” – sounds super legit.)

What is the Fiesta Movement you may be asking yourself… or asking me?
Well it looks as though it’s Fords ad campaign for the release of the Ford Fiesta schedualed to release in the US in 2011.
What it really is is a very smart ad campaign by Ford to get people to post videos on YouTube and send it to all their friends, Tweet about it and write blog posts like the one you’re reading.

What we have to do: Send in a video saying why we would be good “Ford Agents”.

What we did: We just posted a video of us driving around San Francisco and talked about how cool we are. Which is not very (cool that is)…

Also worth noting:
Ford posted our video on their site 2 days after we posted it.
We made teasers for our video, 9 in all, they’re short, but decent.

More importantly then winning the Ford Fiesta, Thomas and I think we should try to enter all the video competitions we can find online and make a show out of it. If you have any leads be sure to let one of us know.

The Media Room in Davos at the World Economic Forum is crazy. I just overheard someone say “this is the worst place I’ve ever had to work”. Now I’m not sure if that’s true for me, I’m working just fine, but you really do have to know how to tune out the sounds around you. Here’s a short video of the life of the room, this is not the most full I’ve seen it.

By the way – the guy next to me is a writer, I’m not sure for what – but I was surprised to see that he types with two fingers.

The trip isn’t an easy one. Leaving from San Francisco at 6:30am on Monday and arriving at my apartment in Davos on Tuesday at 11:30am is no easy feat. Mind you, this year was much easier than last year – I knew what I was doing.

Things worth noting: Because of a strong tail wind, my trip to DC only took four hours. I also got upgraded to extra leg room – sweet! The woman next to me on the flight to Zurich was a chiropractor, so I told her about my back and she said she was impressed by how much I know about how to keep care of it (this has little to do with Davos doesn’t it?). I have not had a beer yet, but there is a Leffe in my refrigerator at the apartment. I have had cheese, photos here.

The trip out was a fun one – a bit tiring, which made my evening short. I had dinner with Loic and Geraldine last night, and didn’t last for more than an hour after that. This morning I woke up a bit early and edited this piece that I filmed on my new HD Flip camera. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for dropping by, more to come.

I have two parties, an Ultimate Frisbee game, the super bowl and a wedding to plan all on my calender this week – I will not be attending, watching or planning any of them, instead I will be at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland.

1: What is WEF? It’s a place where the top players in every field from around the world get together to figure out how to make the world a better place. (Those are my words) Proof <- I filmed that.

2: Why am I going? Good question, the answer is simple: to film, silly! I'll be following Loic while he attends the forum. As a blogger, Loic has a unique opportunity to be inside with a camera person at the forum – this is a privilege that most do not have. So, every day 1:30min of what we film will be on CNN, and Loic will be on air as the “blogger on location.” In addition, we will continue with our daily show which was running last year. Video with Emma Thompson, Bill Gates, Gavin Newsom, and DNA!

3: What will I commit to you? I commit to take as many photos, post as many videos, and eat as much cheese as humanly possible this year! And this year if I see Bono, I’ll say hi.

I leave you with a video from last year, HERE!