My fabulous city is nothing if not colorful.

The sign bears the image of a snail, which I guess speaks to the pace of said progress.

This image barely does justice the the sheer volume of stuff in and around this person’s home. I’ll be back for more pictures soon.

So, here’s an idea. Last weekend I had a visit from my old friend Sciatica. The last time I felt this exquisite pain, I wound up having back surgery. It’s hard to believe that it was 23 years ago. Even so, that’s not long enough for me to forget the pain.

So, since I know that one of the best things I can do for my back is to walk, today I took the first of what I hope will be many walks. Maybe writing it down for all to see will inspire me to stick with it, even if the electric shocks down my left leg do not.

To make the walks more interesting, I’ll try to bring my camera along and see what’s happening in the ‘hood. Turns out there’s a lot to see nearby. This is Maia. She was selling flowers in Styrofoam cups. She sold me the lovely arrangement in her hand for a dollar.

Lelah found Lhotse in an adoption agency in Saigon about 6 months ago. My hunch is that they’re very lucky to have each other.

Kelly loves driving her new car!

The Blackhawk Museum in Danville, California is home to what is allegedly the world’s best car collection. After visiting it today, it’s hard to imagine a more spectacular collection of rare vehicles anywhere else!

We’ve known of its existence for many years, but put off visiting he museum since we’re not really car-enthusiasts. It turns out that this was not a good reason to stay away so long. Even if cars are not your thing, you will be amazed at the outlandish designs of these one-of-a-kind machines.

Today’s visit included a collection of pieces from the studios of Ed Roth. The only way to describe his work – and his wacky website – is, well, “Totally bonkers.”

Admission to this wonderful museum is just ten bucks – well worth it. When you go, do what we did. View the cars on the first floor, then have a nice lunch at the Blackhawk Grill before returning to view the second floor.

View a PicLens-enabled gallery of images here.

The Fresno State Bulldogs beat the San Jose Spartans twice today, 1-0 and 5-3.

This was thedude’s first girl’s softball game and first attempt at shooting one. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has attempted to photograph a fast-moving athlete pushing herself hard that there is only a tiny fraction of a second during which they don’t look totally ridiculous. Pitchers look particularly odd when winding up to deliver a blistering underhand pitch like San Jose’s Deanna Mauer is here.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and changed the site’s look-and-feel. My motivation is only partly driven by aesthetics. The other reason is that WordPress 2.5 is just so dang good. It’s much nicer to look at and easier to use than the latest MovableType release. They seem to have fixed the problems with the WordPress Visual Editor, which makes editing a lot easier. There are thousands of attractive (free!) WordPress themes, and a growing user-community. Importing my old site into WordPress worked extremely well. All I needed to do was make some minor tweaks to the stylesheet to make my images fit perfectly, and BAM! New layout.

I really like the clean look of this theme. The newspaper layout seems to add credibility to my words and pictures. It showcases my photographs nicely, and encourages me to post larger images! Who knows – all of this may inspire me to post more frequently!

There is still some work to do. I may adjust the look of the header slightly – perhaps play with typography a bit. I’ll have to create and get used to a modified workflow. It’s not clear yet how I’ll deal with uploading images. I need to weigh the value of using tags. And, of course, I need to figure out how and where to incorporate the Kellypic!

So, please bear with me while I experiment with the site. You may visit and find things have changed again. I’ll try not to break things too horribly while I sort out structural issues like those broken comments. You can help motivate me to do all this by providing feedback. What do you think? I really enjoy your comments, and I know my readers (That’s you!) enjoy reading them too.

The Grand Opening at our favorite new restaurant appeared to be a smashing success. Lots of delicious food, wine and a few of our favorite neighbors. Thanks, Todd and Eloisa!

BTW, I went “old school” when I shot these. Just to see what kind of results I could get, I mounted an older Nikkor 50 mm 1.4 lens and focused manually! It was a lot of fun, and when I got the focus right, the results are very pleasing. This old lens looks great at 4.0! The only bad part is that it takes two hands to do this, so I couldn’t easily carry a glass of wine while shooting.

View the rest of the images from the Grand Opening here or here.

Olive and an over-abundance of hair products? How could that not lead to some fun?

Want more fun? Click here.

I was asked at the very last moment to shoot a few pictures of the new restaurant for an upcoming issue of Bon Appétit. With the deadline literally hours away, I went downstairs to see what I could do. The funny thing is that I was apologizing for the photos all the while I was shooting them, fearing that I’d get lousy results in the less-than-ideal lighting.

Shots like these are simply not possible without the Nikon D3 and the its spectacular 14-24 mm lens.

All of us – including Orion – love you very much!