How about that as a way to start your Saturday?

If you know me a little bit, you’ll know that I am a huge hockey fan. I grew up in Russia and this is a sport I played on my high school team. I’m also a big soccer fan, but since moving to US, my interest in hockey took over. Ever since I learned I’ll be moving to San Jose I became a big San Jose Sharks fan. I’m not yet a season ticket holder, but I attend 20-30 games a year. I am also one of the bloggers for Fear the Fin, one of the biggest Sharks blogs out there.

This morning I was visiting the official web-site of Dan Boyle, who plays for the Sharks and is one of the top 3 offensive defensemen in the game. He’s a Stanley Cup winner and a recent Olympic champion. To put it simply – I’m a big fan of Dan Boyle. What do I see? As a background for his site, he’s using one of the photos that I took of him back in September. His web-site designer likely pulled it off Dan Boyle’s Wikipedia page, where I posted the photo a while back, and it is available for non-commercial use under the Creative Commons license.

More than anything, I’m flattered that one of my favorite players is using one of my photos of him on his site. That’s a beauty of the Creative Commons license and sometimes it does pay off to bring a camera to the game with me.

As a sidenote, the picture was taken during a pre-season game against Anaheim Ducks. Boyle was voted one of the stars of the game and as a tradition, signed a hockey stick and gave it away to someone in the audience. This time he actually gave it to my son, since we were in a front row. A memorable game all around. Oh eyes, we also won that game 7-1.

When I was in my junior year of college, I had to pick a location where I wanted to work and live following my graduation. I wasn’t going back to Moscow where I grew up, as I decided to stay in the States for a while. I did not want to live where winters are cold either after couple of decades of Russian winters and few more in Utah. But growing up, I was always fascinated with seas and oceans. There is something about the mystery of it and the scale of things that always drew me to it. No wonder I ended up here in Northern California because winters here are now my favorite time of the year.

It’s no wonder that the ocean is now one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I think it’s important that we photograph what we love, otherwise why even bother spending time and money on photography?

Nikon D300
24mm, 1/8 sec, f/16, ISO 100
Lee ND 0.6 + 0.9

I’m really slow processing the photos from that night, because I’m still bitter about that evening.

The evening at Garrapata Beach at Big Sur was going fine. Beautiful light, no wind, big waves (it was the day before the Mavericks competition took place), no one but me and a few teenagers at the beach. What could go wrong, right?

Oh, as always, many things. I left my camera bag where I thought it was safe, where the sand looked dry, almost all the way at the end of the beach by the cliffs. As I was busy shooting away, I noticed that one big wave seemed to kept going longer than all the others. But it was too late. It went straight through my opened camera bag, soaking everything inside and actually killing my laptop that was still running for whatever reason (don’t you hate it when PC laptops doesn’t properly shut down?). The IT guys at my work found sand and salt on the inside disk of the hard drive. I think that wave killed both the hard drive and the laptop shell.

We must respect the ocean.

Nikon D300
24mm, f/16, 1/20 s, ISO100
Lee ND Grad 0.6 + 0.9

There are times when it pays off to take a step back from the photos and come back to them weeks later. This was shot back in July, during Scott Kelby Photowalk in San Francisco, and I have only noticed the original file today, thinking it may be another addition to my developing set from the Embarcadero Center and its concrete jungle. Not sure how I did not notice this image earlier.

Financial District, San Francisco

The amount of concrete and all geometrical elements in this place is almost overwhelming.

I’ve been rather slow uploading new photos and even taking them recently, as too much is going on at home, at work and elsewhere.

But I am still going through my archives from last summer when I shot a lot and trying to see what else I can find.

This is another shot from the Embarcadero Center in the financial district of San Francisco where work brings me every once in a while (see the full set here). I’ve always been fascinated by how architecture interplays with light and concrete in that location, but it wasn’t until I opened my eyes with camera in hand that I discovered that place.

The pictures I always find the hardest to take are from those scenes that I see every day.

I debated for a while whether I should include this one or not as part of my portfolio, since it’s pretty much just a family shot, but I thought I would anyway, as this shot is one of a kind in my collection.

Those of us who are parents can appreciate how hard it is to catch an infant (Maks was still just 6 months in this shot) at the top of his smile, looking directly at the camera. In fact, it’s almost impossible. I took several thousands of photos of Maks since he was born 20 months ago, but this is the only one I have where he is smiling with his whole face while directly interacting with the camera. I’ve taken thousands of shots of other toddlers as well for our friends and family, and still, no luck to catch an expression like this.

Many will look at the picture, and think – it’s just a family snapshot that should remain in a photo album. To them I say, go out and try to take a shot like this of a kid that age before you say it’s a piece of cake job.

The way our brain works is that we remember the extremes. When I think of Maks, I think of him laughing his head off, or smiling. Just like he does in this picture, and perhaps this still image is how I will remember his childhood.