Farewell, Lincoln. Welcome Audi.

Still loving the new camera. Any excuse to shoot with it is good enough for me, but especially when it involves good food and fine friends!

Our Dear neighbors brought their parents up to meet thedude and Kellster. What a great-looking group!

The new restaurant opened its doors for dinner last night. The invitation-only event, held primarily for residents of the building, neighbors and close friends, was a smashing success. I can say without reservation that the food and wine at our new restaurant is excellent. It was also a blast to hang out with some of my favorite people – my neighbors! We will definitely be having dinner at MoNo soon. Saturday night, to be precise. See you there!

Some of the brightest (and best-looking!) people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Elise, Adam, Brant, Ron, Steve, Shannon, Guoying and Harley.

Oh my. I guess I should feel guilty about yesterday’s food orgy, but I don’t. I’m too busy drooling over the pictures. Here’s a taste of the menu at MoNO.

After we finished photographing (and eating!) the food, we continued the feast at Chris and Ben’s with champagne and succulent leg of lamb.

I can’t help but say a couple things about the D3 combined with the 14-24 mm lens. Together they allow me to do things I would not even try with my D2X. With the D3, I can shoot in much lower light than previously possible. It’s surprisingly easy to get used to being able to shoot at ISO 1600 with virtually no loss of image fidelity. And the lens is incredible! Look at the images above and see if you can find any color-fringing at all. Even in the horribly overexposed regions there is none. Wow. Same goes for barrel distortion. This zoom lens is better wide open than the Nikkor 14 mm prime it replaces at any aperture. I am so happy to have this lens. Now I really want to own the other Nikkor lens in this class.

I thought my friends in Wisconsin – who I’m told are digging out of more than a foot of fresh-fallen snow – might like to share our day at the Briones Regional Park. Yes, we even got a bit of a sunburn!

While Kelly went for a ride with Mary, Magic, Chance and Classy, I spent some quality time shooting with my super smooth D3. What a gorgeous day! Sorry you could not all be here with us.

I had to work at home today so that I could be here to deal with a few building issues. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I finally had the chance to eat lunch at Mono – the highly-anticipated new restaurant in our building. I am thrilled to report that everything about lunch was excellent. The shots above show proud chef Todd Wilson and his classy interpretation of a grilled cheese sandwich. I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture of my chicken sandwich before tearing into it. It was delicious.

These are among the first shots taken with my new Nikon D3 and 14-24 mm lens. Two things stand out. The first is the sharpness of this amazing lens. The second not-so-obvious thing is that these images were shot at an ISO setting of 1600. Wow! This camera will change the way I shoot.

Lucky for me, the owners of the restaurant noticed my new camera and offered me the chance to do some photography for their web site in exchange for food and wine. Hm… How long do you think I had to ponder this one?

I’ve known Steve longer than anyone else in California. He’s in somewhat better shape than I am, so when he proposed I go on a hike with him ten years ago, I was worried about keeping up. He promised to “take it easy”, but we still walked for hours – uphill all the way. I snapped this with my old Konica point-and-shoot on one of several rest stops. It was a beautiful day and we spotted a wild boar family along the way, which was cool. So, even though I was no doubt bitchin’ the whole way, it was worth it. Thanks, Bro!