I am on a road trip again, enjoying the excitement of visiting new destinations. Afters staying up long for all the night time photography, I usually need to check into my hotel, shower, eat, download the photographs, recharge the batteries and check the weather for the next days. I do not get to sleep before 1am on most nights, but I really enjoy night time cityscapes. The streets are empty and the colors are much more vivid, due to the different light sources.

Skipping through some photographs, I picked this one since I liked the mood it projects. I have been in this city for just one afternoon (and night) which is a shame, but there are still so many places left to explore.

Nighttime city shots are very easy to create. All you need is patience and a tripod. Once you try it, I am sure you will get hooked too.

Somehow, whenever Dani and I go on a trip, we end up shopping for it. This time we bought better carry-on suitcases with laptop bay, since we will try to cut down on our check in luggage.

We also end up buying camera stuff, even if we buy just a filter or some other accessory.

This time we will go on a big city trip in the eastern USA and Canada. Big tripods are always a hassle on trips like this. Even if you would choose to lug a big tripod through a city, officials often restrict access to public places if you carry a tripod. They automatically assume that you make a load of money from your pictures, just because you plan and choose not to have blurry pictures.

On this trip we are going to better the odds in our favor with our new Gorillapods. We bought the large version (Gorillapod SLR-Zoom) which is surprisingly small. It appeared bigger on the pictures. I think you also need a tripod head, although you can screw the pod into your camera directly, some positions require the head. I am using my Bogen Head in the picture.

Attaching the pod to the tree is surprisingly flimsy. I do not expect to get superior results from this, especially on a windy day. I have to remember to turn on the mirror lockup feature, even with moderately long exposures. When I am back from the trip, I will post a Gorillapod review.

The life of a photographer is maybe 10% about photography and 90% about doing other stuff, and that's a very optimistic view, since I don't want to put anyone off.

I spend most of the time making a living one way or another, editing photos, fulfilling orders, answering emails and other fluff.

Included in this other fluff is the smooth running of my server which wasn't so smooth lately and the web design tasks. I got repaid by an awful drop in traffic and even lost some Search Engine love. Finally, I was able (or so I hope) to get the problem solved by a technician at Servint. Seems like there was an errand eAccelerator running, although I was positive that I had disabled it a while ago.

Most of my readers aren't coming here to hear me whine about this or talk about other web design projects, although I occasionally do drop a few pearls of web server wisdom. It is a part of this business and may be of interest for those of us who aren't just about flickr and blogger. I think I also owe my regular readers an explanation for the performance drop and my tardiness with new articles.

Hopefully, the problem is fixed and things will run more smoothly from now on, but I guess it will take at least 6 months to regain my former traffic numbers. I am somewhat stomped by how fast the search guys reacted and dropped rankings. Lets hope they are just as fast giving them back.

San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world. I live close to it and yet I never really updated my San Francisco Gallery until now. My backlog of photographs of San Francisco is now almost gone. I still have one some more work left to do, but the San Francisco Gallery is now in much better shape. As my website and my number of photographs grows, my time shrinks.

Today I was able to structure the Gallery into many smaller galleries, necessary to accomodate the amount of pictures I uploaded (and will upload soon). Check out the result of my work. Hope you like it.

As I drove home today, I noticed a strange mist over South San Jose. The closer I came to getting home, the eerier the whole scene got, when it finally dawned on me.

The wind had turned and suddenly the smoke of some of California's raging wildfires blew our direction. Fires are burning in too many places at once while California is facing one of the worst droughts in history.

As the evening came and the sun set, the whole landscape was suddenly bathed in an eery red light creating a surreal atmosphere as if the world would come to an end. I just had to draw my camera and walk the short distance to Blossom Hill road to capture the feeling of the night.

People were swerving and driving strangely while looking at the sky and when we climbed one nearby parking garage we found a small crowd of spectators gazing at the sunset as everything got covered up by thick smoke clouds.

Looking up, I can now see a blood red moon shining through, which leads me to believe that the clouds were thinning.

I am still months behind with a giant backlog of pictures on my hard drive. It seems like I have finally been able to sort through my computer problems and can now start uploading again.

I put some pictures of Goblin Valley State Park (Utah) online. The stone goblins almost seem real and it is not hard to see why the park is named this way.

Originally called Mushroom Valley by its discoverer, Chaffin, Goblin Valley is a much more fitting name for this place.

I also took the opportunity to put some new pictures in my Bryce Canyon Gallery.

As always, enjoy the photos. More are coming soon.

I took the chance that Memorial Day offered me to go on a trip to Oregon. Taking a few days off was exactly what I needed after all the recent stress.

Unfortunately, the weather in Oregon was mostly bad with the exception of last Saturday. Somehow, it is always raining in Oregon when I am there. On all my trips, I never even had a full day of sunshine. Oregon is amazingly green due to the amount of rain it gets. It is one of my favorite places to photograph, if I have any visibility.

I wanted to evaluate my new Rebel XSI and take a few cool shots of Oregon. I got a few nice snaps on Saturday but not much else. Photographically the trip was not very exciting but I was able to relax quite a bit and since so many people stayed at home due to rising fuel cost, I did not even hit the mandatory traffic jam coming back after the holiday weekend.

I added some more information to my Rebel XSI Field Guide and I will probably add the pictures to my Oregon Gallery this weekend.