What you will see more of in the future is shots like the one below. I was fortunate enough to find myself in a position to snap a photo of the flight deck of a Cessna Citation X, the world’s fastest civilian jet. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the Citation X since it would bore most of you but the quick and dirty is this: it’s the currently the world’s fastest civilian jet cruising at nearly the speed of sound at Mach .92 and able to fly at altitudes of up to 51,000 ft. If you compare that to your average airliner that’s over 11,000 ft higher than what most airliners can even fly at and faster than the typical Mach .80 maximum cruise speed of most airliners out there.

Anyways that’s enough from me for now. I’ll try and get some shots up from my trip to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas where JFK was assassinated in 1963 in a week or so when I get the chance but in the meantime enjoy the shot below!

Only two words are needed to describe Katherine and Ron’s engagement session: fun and daring. Not only did Katherine and Ron kill the camera with smiles, they did so with some bravery when a rogue wave gave us all a good scare. But Ron and Katherine both hung tough and in the end we came out with some great shots because of it. Thank you Katherine and Ron for the great time! You guys rock and I can’t wait till June for parts two and three!

Speak to anyone who really knows me and they willl tell you that that I love beaches and I love tropical islands with incredible beaches. So it was only natural that I start off working with seascapes and our scouting for a suitable beach for the upcoming engagement session gave me the great opportunity to do so. I can honestly tell you that I am my own harshest critic and while I’m not terribly disappointed in these photos I can honestly say that I’m not very excited about them either. I can already pick out the areas where I could have made the shots better and I wish we would have had more time in our scouting session to shoot so that I could have taken full advantage of the beautiful sunset that came later that evening. I also wish I would have spent more time in finding a better spot to shoot from to feature a more interesting foreground than what I have below. Either way, it was still good to get out and shoot for once for my own pleasure and I can think of a lot worse things to do in life so I’m content with just being able to get out and practice for a bit. Enjoy!

This trip to Destin was also special for another reason. Jessica and Jeremy’s wedding also meant that I would be reuniting with two of my best friends, Ron and Ryan, together all at once for the first time in a few years. It’s amazing to look back and think that I first met Ron back when we were freshman’s in high school and that I eventually met Ryan through Ron at the end of my senior year. We’ve gone through a lot together and have had some crazy fun times together but the one thing I realize most is that as we get older, we have (to include 3 different deployments to two different war zones) and we will always be there for one another even though we’re now separated by thousands of miles between us. Or at least me anyways as Ron has recently relocated to Southern Florida while Ryan is still in Destin, Florida.

But that’s enough sappy stuff from me. Though before you skip on down to the photos, I just want to add that I attended this wedding as a guest and I only shot a limited amount of what I could without getting in the way of the paid photographer (whom I’m going to link to as soon as I receive her contact info) while still being able to enjoy the wedding as a guest. So because of that freedom I decided to play around slightly with the look of some of my photos so don’t be surprised if you see something different from me. Enjoy!

Traditionally the New Year is celebrated with blessings that involve wiping powder on peoples faces and water fights while the hard working farmers take a moment to enjoy the fruits of their harvest and relax before the rainy season begins. Now as you can imagine, the celebrations are quite a bit different here in the States and abroad than they are in Cambodia but the partying is still there nonetheless. Here in Long Beach, the celebrations started with the 6th Annual Cambodian New Year Parade which took place on April 4th followed by the annual New Year Celebration at El Dorado Park on the 10th. Now normally I would have been out there documenting the celebrations with my camera, but this year I told myself to just simply enjoy the party instead of taking photos of everyone else enjoying it. But with that said, I couldn’t stop myself from snapping a few photos so here are some shots from the New Years Parade and a few more from KAA’s performance at El Dorado Park. Enjoy!

And as always, you can find the rest of the photos from KAA’s performance at SOJOURN FOTO’s Online Gallery.

“Expulsion”, a new work from Heidi Duckler and Collage Dance Theatre will activate a vacant lot in Cambodia Town. Based on the themes of immigration and displacement, this cross-disciplinary site performance will explore the temporary, often fragile nature of “home.”

So I don’t want to spoil it for you but it’s definitely going to be something new and different if you’re expecting a traditional performance from KAA. Part of the collaboration between the Collage Dance Theatre and KAA was meant to push both groups to their creative boundaries as both groups had to be able to adapt to and create a new performance to fit not only fit the theme of Expulsion, but location and setting as well. So while you’ll probably recognize a lot of what’s taken from traditional Classical Cambodian Dance, this performance features new choreography that was created exclusively for Expulsion. I should also say that the new dance combined with the acrobatic performance of the Collage Dance Theatre should definitely keep you entertained. But that’s enough for me, on to the photos!

Anyways I hope you enjoyed that little sneak peak. If you want to see the rest of the performance in full you’ll have to show up to that nondescript vacant dirt lot on either March 19th or March 20th at 6 pm. For more information about Expulsion or the Collage Dance Theatre you can visit their site here or just take a look below.

Date: March 19th and 20th, 2011.
Time: 6:00 pm.
Location: 1546 E. Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA 90813. At the intersection of Anaheim and Walnut across from Mark Twain Library.