What happens when you combine a favorite Italian pastime, a handful of colorfully costumed friends, and a little bit of competitive spirit?  The First Annual Springer Classic Bocce Ball Tournament!  As summer came to a close and we all said farewell to sunny days in the park, the tournament was the perfect way to celebrate with friends, old and new.  Here’s to a new annual tradition …

Although we support many causes in and around the Seattle area, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust is an organization near and dear to our hearts.  In celebration of its 20th anniversary, my wife’s family and I walked the “western leg” of the MTSG trail with about one hundred others, trekking from Bellevue to the Seattle waterfront.  As an urbanite who also values the rural and undeveloped spaces so close to our city, it was an honor to celebrate an organization that has done so much to preserve and sustain these special places.

The stars aligned when a last-minute road trip to Portland turned into a reunion with friends (both old and new) and an all-day tour of Willamette Valley’s wine country.  More than 30 tastes and one dusty dive bar later, we returned to the city just in time for an amazing supper and a much-needed night cap at our host’s lovely home near Washington Park.

I love Sayulita….

A spontaneous decision to travel south for a friend’s 50th birthday in May lead us to Casa Carlos, a “quaint” home on a cliff overlooking Sayulita, Mexico.  The much-needed vacation brought sun, surf, good food, post-beach “happy hours” on the Casa’s deck, and an ill-advised swim through an underwater cave.  It was a trip that was at once action-packed and completely mellow, just what the doctor ordered.  If this is what 50 looks like …

So here are a just a few images from our week in Sayulita.

So you might have heard, but I am now a happily married man! The wedding was wonderful and everything went off without a hitch. Both my new wife and I had so much fun and actually remember all of it.  To celebrate and get away from it all we hopped on a plane from Seattle to Bangkok for a little R & R in Thailand.

We wanted to keep this trip nice and mellow after planning a wedding and kept the trip down to a few locations. We ended up in Krabi, Koh Lanta and Bangkok with some daytrips to other areas like Koh phi phi. We laughed, we read, we slept, we ate and enjoyed the 90 degree weather to the fullest.

I got to marry the love of my life on December 4th, 2010….

*photos via Sarah Rhoads

My good friend and business mentor Tim asked me if I would be willing to take some photos of his Grandson Lucas when he was in town. As Tim has done so much for me over the last two years I jumped at the oppurtunity to take some photos of the little guy.

Lucas turned out to be  awesome and had so much energy and spunk. He did not want to stop playing and when he finally did it was for an ice cream cone. So Lucas his mom, Tim and I headed to the park for a little photo time.

*Something to note is that this was Lucas’s very first ice cream cone and he literally went into an ice cream drunk. It was hands down one of the funniest things i have ever seen!

Holy Crap those kids are cute. That’s pretty much the first thing I said when I met Matt, Tirza & the kids. We met this super cool family at the Sasquatch festival at the Gorge. Senya was running around wearing cool earmuffs and rocking out to the lonely forest. Matt and his family are friends with some of my close buddies and when we met at the show I told them I had to take some pictures.

We met on a clear Seattle day and headed to the beach. The kids where ridiculously fun and we had a blast running around.

I had the great pleasure to photograph one of my oldest friends newborn babies last night. Little Isabel Russell made her grand appearance  about 2 weeks ago, to the delight of her parents Will and Natalie Russell. The craziest thing i have found lately about growing up is the stages your friendship’s go through.  I am at the age that my friends are no longer  getting married but are now married and  having 1, 2 or 3 kids! It’s awesome to think that the guy that I used to shotgun beers with in high school is now the proud papa to a little baby girl! Lets just hope she makes varsity as a freshman like her dad, but has a full head of hair by senior year (unlike her dad).

So thank you again Will and Natalie for letting me enjoy some time with the little monster and for feeding me some of Will’s amazing cooking!

Click Here for more pics……

Well this will be the last post of 2009! It’s definently been an interesting last year. From massive loss to massive gain! So to finish out the year, I joined a few friends up in Glacier and spent a few days relaxing and snowboarding. Three dogs, 5 friends, enough food and drink to feed a city block and lots of movies lead to a fantastic couple of days!

Goodbye 2009…Hello 2010

CLICK HERE for a few pics from the trip….

So its been along time since the last post. If you last recall, my new camera decided to die on me during the trip to Europe. So after  trekking 30 pounds of extra camera gear around Europe for two weeks. A month wait from Canon, and a retarted ups driver. I was able to get my camera back. The funny part was that  I was so excited to use it when it showed up i didn’t. I had spent so much time reading photo blogs, watching tutorials and being a massive camera nerd. That i forgot the greatest advice I ever recieved about photography……ALWAYS BE SHOOTING!

So i threw on a coat, grabbed my headphones and started walking in the dark. Luckly I live right next to the Seattle Center/Fun Forest, and as you all know they are tearing it down. So I did a little ninja mission and snuck into the forest. I walked around the Seattle Center for about an hour and remembered why I spent so much time reading, watching and studying. It felt damn good to have my camera back and i look forward to sharing some more photos with you in the future.

Click Here to check out some pics from the FOREST

A 5am wake up call, a cab driver who was falling asleep while driving us to the airport, and the hands down worst airline of all time, RYANAIR, lead us to Paris. Let’s just say that our accommodations in Paris were absolutely unreal! I could not have dreamed up a cooler place to stay. Our good friend’s mother, who lives in Paris, was out of tow for the week. So she let us crash at her “city house.” When we walked in, our jaws and bags hit the floor at the same time. We could go on for hours about how cool this place was, but to sum it up….. clawfoot bathtub in the bedroom, ridiculous location, and cooler than vanilla ice in 94. For the next three days we just sat back and hung out. Ate cheese, bread, and wine for almost every meal. Went to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, but more importantly just kicked it Parisian style.

We both had a fantastic 2 week vacation staying at wonderful places, seeing amazing things, meeting fantastic people, and getting a glimpse of life outside of Seattle.

We will leave you with this…..

When you start thinking that it is time to get away, just do it. Get a ticket, pack your camera, and get on that plane. Get lost as much as possible, try unusual things, and just let things unfold.

I hate hard working people. I work hard but don’t look like i do. Life is to be casual. Work hard, but look casual doing so.

Karl Lagerfeld

After a much needed lazy morning at the hotel, we grabbed our cameras, brass knuckles, and coats and headed to the Ghetto….Rome’s Jewish Ghetto, that is. Hoping to spend some time with our peeps, we were a little disappointed to find that the synagogue and most of the shops were already beginning to close in preparation for the Sabbath. Undeterred, we explored the neighborhood’s streets in search of gun shops, liquor stores and drop top 64 Impalas.  With no luck finding any of those things in the ghetto, we did seem to find more jewelry stores and pawn shops then you could shake a loaf of matza at.

It began to get dark so we went in search of the perfect last supper in Rome. We stumbled across a neighborhood within which we felt totally at home — the streets were lined with chic little boutiques, furniture and design shops, and dimly-lit bars.  We were amused, yet somehow unsurprised, when we looked up and discovered that we had inadvertently found Via di Giordano. Perfect!  We finally found the restaurant we had been searching for — a battered leather couch, a warm fire, an amazing bottle of wine, great tunes, and a four hour meal that was perfecto!

We headed back to the hotel to get packed and try and get a few hours of sleep for our 5am wake up and flight to Paris. Later Italy….hello France!

The Vatican….for the two of us, this place does not hold as much meaning as it does for about 50 million other people. I can say, though, that those Catholics sure have some crazy style! When we entered Vatican City, it was a pretty unreal experience. The architecture, the over-the-top buildings, and Saint Peter’s Basilica made our necks sore from looking up so much! We strolled around then, you know, just decided to go see the Sistine Chapel.

For those of you who have not been, it’s at the end of the longest hallway in history. It literally took 30 minutes to get to it, and then another 20 to get out. There were so many paintings and artifacts that we literally went into Vatican overload. We hauled ass out of there to let our brains relax a bit and headed on the Metro to the Trevi Fountain and then to the Campo di Fiore, where we pretended we were Romans and consumed large amounts of wine and pillaged the city!

As we bid farewell to our wonderful hosts at Casetta, we decided to head into Florence for the day for some more sights and sounds. After a wonderful day, we boarded the train to Rome. We treated ourselves to first class tickets on the fast train and brought with us a minagere of goodies from Tuscany to snack on (picture below). Let’s just say we received the stink eye from many of our fellow passengers.

Once we arrived in Rome, we checked into our swanky hotel which ended up being a considerable way out of town. Oh well, when in Rome take the Metro. So Katie and I have become fluent in the language of the Roman Metro and bus lines. It’s actually been pretty amazing riding the trains with all of the real Romans. It gives us a chance to get away from the crowds and experience some non-tourist activities.

On our first day here, however, we had to hit up a few tourist destinations. We pulled on our hats and scarves, hopped on a crowded bus after our train broke down, and arrived downtown — with the Colosseum to our left and the Roman Forum straight ahead.  After assessing the crowds, we decided to explore the Palatine and the Forum first.  Amazing!  Without the benefit of a tour guide, we wandered the ruins trying to imagine what once stood where crumbling columns and chunks of marble now lay.

A few hours and 300 photographs later, we stumbled into a little restaurant where we requested a bottle of wine and the house favorites.  Delicious!  Refueled, we explored the Colosseum until the sun went down and we couldn’t walk another step. We ended the day at a bizarre little restaurant in the corner of town, where we dined on risotto and yet another basket of bread.  Needless to say, it was another full day!

It’s been a few days now since we posted. We’ve let the vacation kick in and are officially in a state I like to call the walking sleep. If you remember from our last post, my sweet sweet camera died on us! No fear, though, backup camera to the rescue (Thanks, Jim).  To cure what was ailing us, we decided to go to Chianti. Yes, Chianti, like the wine that guy at the expensive Italian restaurant tries to sell you. Yeah, we went straight to the source. While in Chianti, we had an amazing meal (maybe our best yet), drank aggressive amounts of locally grown wine, and went to the wine museum where we had 100+ wines to sample. Let’s just say it was a slow drive home, and I was with my lawyer.

The next day, we went with our hosts to “The Mall” which, for all you ladies reading this, was the fanciest and most outrageous outlet mall ever imagined — Gucci, Fendi, Pucci, Valentino, Burberry, etc. …. Let’s just say that it was a long day of shopping!  We then escaped the pouring rain, returned home to Casetta, lit a fire, and dined on pasta and wine before passing out, once again totally content.

Yesterday hopped in Panda and drove to the beach.  Blue sky, bare feet in the sand, and gelato.  It doesn’t get much better!  Then it was off to Pisa, where we took photos, had a cold one, and refused to photograph ourselves “pushing up” its leaning tower!  We returned to Casetta just in time to catch the olive pressing!  Finished the day with a drink at the local bar with our fellow harvesters!  Today we went off to Siena and San Gimignano and all was well until my new 5d mark 2 decided to die on me. 5th day of trip and the stoopid thing is broken. Not going to let it get us down though. Will fix when we get back to the states.

So this is how we started our day today. Off to the beach at Forte del Marrni! A day full of no plans, lots of pictures, and some Italian sunshine. I take that back, we have to go to the olive press tonight to see the fruits of our labor made into extra virgin olive oil! Tough life….

We woke up to the greatest cups of coffee we have ever tasted. After the coffee coma wore off we got our gear together to go and pick olives. Yes, you know, a normal day like any other. Just me, Katie, some Greek and Austrian royalty, and a million euro view.

After a tough day of picking (not so much) we decided to have dinner in Florence. You know, just a normal day shooting over to Florence for dinner. WTF???