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A day before my cousin and I shot a recent wedding together, we took a stroll in the neighborhood where he grew up, an area his immediate family still calls home. He’s been away from San Francisco for many years now, so coming back to his old ‘hood without ever seeing its slow transition from “somewhat ghetto everything” to “sustainable green local fancy vegan fair trade organic everything” made the walk an interesting experience, I’m sure.

As you can see, he had a chance to practice chasing Suki down the street while trying to photograph her. Not easy!

The folks over at VSCO recently released version two of their awesome film presets, which I used to process all of these photos. The new presets are the bomb, period. Love the look, love the customization. Love. Love. Love.

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Images: Canon 5D Mark III + 50mm f/1.2L

VSCO: Kodak Portra 160 VC +

Life With The OM-D

I totally love the Olympus OM-D. The Pana-Leica 25mm, Olympus 12 and 45mm M. Zuiko primes, and the body itself all fit in my camera bag with plenty of room to spare, so I can take the entire kit wherever I go.

The OM-D checks a lot of the right boxes. Fast, responsive, quiet, well-built, small, light, good-looking. It’s weather-sealed, has a great tilt and swivel touch screen, an awesome EVF, plenty of physical control points, plenty of amazing lenses to choose from, and the new 5-axis stabilization works so well it’s scary.

Grainy-Filmy look brought to you by VSCO (Kodak Portra 800). Black and whites are out of camera. I’m really looking forward to logging more time with this system.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 | 12mm f/2 | 25mm f/1.4 | 45mm f/1.8

A Few New Tools

Nikon D800 +  Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G | ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 (VSCO’s Kodak Tri-X 400)

The weekend was a little busier than I anticipated, but I still managed to squeeze in some time behind the D800′s finder. I also added Lightroom 4 and the newest, D800-compatible version of VSCO to my software tool-kit. I don’t always process with VSCO, but I always love the result when I do:

We also found this little gem at a camera sidewalk sale today. I can’t believe how incredibly fun it is to shoot with the Olympus XA! This thing is going everywhere with me

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Images: Nikon D800 | 50mm f/1.4G | 24mm f/1.4G

The Academy of Sciences: Monochrome Edition

I have yet to visit San Francisco’s Academy of Sciences during the daytime. Instead, we always end up there during Night Life, a 21+ only event where the big kids get to enjoy the Academy’s exhibits with the added benefit of cocktails and music thrown into the mix. .and no little kids.

During the daytime, the building relies heavily on natural light for interior illumination, so it gets pretty dark in there at night. While there was no shortage of color to work with inside the building last night, I wanted to try something a little different photographically on this visit and create some black and white images of our experience. Lots of wide open, high ISO shooting that night, mostly with my Fuji X100. The high ISO files are so clean from that camera, however, that I added grain to these images for a better black and white look.

My favorite exhibit has got to be this giant glass dome that houses a four-story rainforest. Birds and butterflies whiz by your head as you examine plant life from different parts of the planet. Oh, and it’s terribly humid in there!

The aquarium is equally awesome:

There’s usually a special theme involved with each week’s Night Life event, and this week’s involved robots. Pretty cool:

Once you’re done with the exhibits, you can just hang out, get some food and drinks, enjoy the music, or just run around photographing things, if you’re a photo geek like me anyways.

Everything screeches to a halt at 10pm when the Academy closes, which always feels too early. I suppose that’s a good thing if you have to wake up for work on Friday morning, however.

You know, Night Life is great and all, but in the end it’s all about the company. =)

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Images: Fuji X100
B/W Conversion: VSCO’s Kodak Tri-X