Category: Adventures

  • I Got A Bit Jerky, And In Return, Topanga Got Fresh!

    I Got A Bit Jerky, And In Return, Topanga Got Fresh!

    Topanga canyon ca nx300 1200sfw

    So this was fun. I recently got a minute to head over to Topanga Fresh Market & Cafe, the organic market in town, to check out the display for Topanga’s Finest Jerky, the beef jerky company that used one of my canyon images for their label. I must say, it looked pretty darn good in there. I thought I had posted this here already, and perhaps I have and accidentally erased it, so forgive me if that was the case (I have a vague recollection of the event…). Anyhow, check it, just in time for the flurry of spring activity that’s about to abound!! Oh, and it’s gluten-free for those of you that maintain a gluten-free diet (and each pack comes with a handy dandy flosser…it’s the little things…). You can either stop by Topanga Fresh if you’re in the area, or hit up www.TopangasFinest.com directly.

  • You Don’t Need Psychedelics To See All The Purty Colors…Just Innovate!

    You Don’t Need Psychedelics To See All The Purty Colors…Just Innovate!

    Ok, these are kinda  crazy…does anyone remember the Hypercolor shirts from back in the day? You know, those shirts that when you pressed on them, they changed color with the body heat and pressure? No? Maybe? Yes? McFly?!?? WTF am I talking about? Anyway, for the 80s T&C, Gotcha, Maui & Sons crowd, here’s a throwback with a twist…Innovate Clothing!
    Innovate has taken Hypercolor to another level (you’ve got to figure that one was due!). Same sort of idea, but with these, you don’t even have to touch them. Basically there are patterns and designs printed on the shirt themselves in some sort of special secret ink that’s sensitive to sunlight, so when you’re indoors, you see one thing, but once you get outdoors, you see colors and patters and shapes that vividly and magically appear onto the shirts. Pretty neat stuff.

    Anywho, they hit me up to do a product line photo shoot for their new site a few weeks ago, and it just went live. Figured I’d share…

    Now go on n’ git’ one (or six)

    Innovate Clothing!

  • No Matter How Often You See It, The Magic Of Yosemite Will Always Seem Fresh

    No Matter How Often You See It, The Magic Of Yosemite Will Always Seem Fresh

    Roosevelts yosemite

    So this is pretty sweet. The Roosevelts just published a post entitled “45 Photos That Will Make You Want To Visit Yosemite National Park.” That first picture look familiar? It is just about that time of year again…might be time to dust off the ol’ packs…
    Anyhow, click here to see all 45

  • Bluegrass And Treetops On The Topanga Trails

    Bluegrass And Treetops On The Topanga Trails

    Topanga Canyon Hiking Trail_Sunburst Through Oak Tree
    Topanga Canyon Hiking Trail_Sunburst Through Oak Tree

    T’was a perfect day in Topanga Canyon, and to stay inside would have been a crime, so I grabbed one of my cameras, the Samsung NX300, threw on the ‘summer’ outfit, and headed out into the hills. As I was hiking through this, live bluegrass echoing through the canyon in the distant background served as my soundtrack. Don’t know where it was coming from or what it was, but it was perfect.

    Perfect.

    Click past the break for a few images from that Topanga Canyon hike.

  • Back To The Future Does Pacific Coast Highway – And The DeLorean Is An Airstream

    Back To The Future Does Pacific Coast Highway – And The DeLorean Is An Airstream

    Image asset

    So I don’t have too much to say about this one, really just wanted to share. This was one of the properties I was assigned to shoot yesterday for Airbnb.com. It was a chunk of land on a bluff off Pacific Coast Highway that housed an old vintage Airstream trailer that rested on a ledge in what seemed to be the most idyllic, picture-perfect mini-canyon on the California coast.

    Anyhow, the lead picture to the left here was processed to look the way I felt when I was wandering around in there…simple…relaxed…peaceful…grateful…unapologetically lazy…perhaps what the glory days of Southern California felt like, a feeling of romantic nostalgia who’s remnants only seems to exist in isolated, hidden, carefully-guarded pockets these days.

    This place was definitely one of those pockets.

    Click on “Continue Reading” and then click on the pics.

    View them large.

    Enjoy…

  • A Fresh Selection Of iPhone 5 Parallax Wallpapers If You Wanna

    A Fresh Selection Of iPhone 5 Parallax Wallpapers If You Wanna

    Santa monica ca iphone5p

    Murrieta ca iphone5p

    Topanga canyon ca iphone5p

    I know it’s been a while, and have quite a few things lined up for real soon, but until then hopefully a few iPhone5 parallax wallpapers can tide you over if you want ’em…

    If you’re on your iPhone, just click the one you like and when the full resolution one comes up, press down, and save to camera roll. If you’re in your browser, you can do the same by right-clicking and saving the image to your hard drive.

    These were all shot on the Samsung NX300 for their Imagelogger program. And as always when I throw these suckers out there, if I get enough interest for other devices, I’ll gladly begin to format for those as well. Feel free to drop me a line…

  • Bad Days Are The New Good Days! Thanks For The Reminder Photofocus!

    Bad Days Are The New Good Days! Thanks For The Reminder Photofocus!

    Bad Days Are The New Good Days! Thanks For The Reminder Photofocus!

    So I know you’ve probably already seen enough of this set of images, but, well, too bad! Ha! An image from this series keeps getting around one way or another – this time absolutely humbling me by showing up on the homepage for Photofocus.com as this week’s ‘Featured Image.’ This is Scott Bourne, Richard Harrington, Melissa Niu and company! It’s madness! Check it out:

    CLICK ME!

    The crazy thing is, I thought I was having a bad day that day when I just needed to get out and away so jumped in my car for that ride up the coast where I ran into these buggers on that hill. If it wasn’t for that ‘bad day,’ I would have never been able to make these images, rendering that day not a bad day after all – it actually turned out to be one of the best days of the year. Just another one of life’s funny reminders that you never ever ever ever ever know what’s going to happen and why things happen the way they do. Whether a frown or a smile, just roll with it…after all, neither lasts, but one of them is always sure to return…

    Can’t wait for my next bad day!!

  • It’s Official! I’ve Been Labeled! And I’m Totally OK With It!

    It’s Official! I’ve Been Labeled! And I’m Totally OK With It!

    Worth The Climb_Topanga_Canyon_California_Sunset
    So this is kinda neat! Remember that beef jerky company from last year that licensed one of my images for their label? Well, they’re now at market!!!
    If you’re a beef jerky fan (as I most certainly am), you’ll love this stuff. I’ve had several batches of it and it’s the perfect consistency and toughness. None of that soft madness, and not so tough it’s like biting through leather, it’s right in between.
    And tasty.
    And juicy.
    And spicy.
    And gluten-free.
    And you even get a free flosser with each pack (clever…).
    If you’re around Los Angeles, you can pick it up at Topanga Fresh in Topanga Canyon and a few more stores that I’ll list here soon.
    If you’re not in the area here in Los Angeles, you can order directly from the website, www.TopangasFinest.com, where you can also see the image on the label!!
    Can you tell I’m sorta excited about this…
  • We Saved Rabbits And Got Away With Kidnapping…All In A Day’s Work!

    We Saved Rabbits And Got Away With Kidnapping…All In A Day’s Work!

    Rabbit season defy agency

    Yes, it’s a been a fun start to the New Year. So just after getting the opportunity to shoot Cindy Taylor last week, I got asked to help a friend Produce and DIT (Digital Technician – an overly fancy term for downloading video footage onto hard drives) a short film. Though I spent close to a decade working on and editing videos and commercials and whatnots, it’s been a while since I’ve been on a film set and I must say, it wasn’t too bad, one because I was working with friends, and two, well, my title wasn’t Production Assistant! No offense to my PA brothers and sisters, but, well, those weren’t exactly the most savory years of my working life…

    Anyhow, the production was called Rabbit Season, a film by Director Jimmie Rhee from Defy Agency in Culver City. It was a bit of a dark story, which I’ll share here once they’re done editing and ready to release, but we had some fun on set. It’s not everyday that you’re getting paid to find a 65 Cadillac, a way to make a fake rabbit look like a real dead rabbit, deflect a police officer who got a call from a pedestrian who witnessed a scene in which a girl was being thrown into the trunk of a car but didn’t see the camera filming it on the mountain top above, and collect chicken bones from lunchtime catering to try to pass as rabbit bones on film.

    Rabbit Season_Defy Agency_Wasim Muklashy Photography
    Rabbit Season_Defy Agency_Wasim Muklashy Photography

    In any case, Lacy Street Production Center was one of the locations (some of the films that shot there included “Catch Me If You Can” and “Saw”), which is that crazy dilapidated looking brick building in the pictures below. The other location was Singing Springs in the Angeles National Forest, which was particularly nice as, well, we got to be outside, in the mountains, all day long without any reception. And you all know how I like to be outside all day long! The picture at the right was my office for the day…

    Anyhow, no special lesson learned here or any particular words of any significance or importance, just figured I’d share a few production stills from a few scenes and locations from that shoot, all of which were shot on the Samsung NX300 mirrorless camera.

    And don’t worry, no animals were harmed in the making of this film. As a matter of fact, we ended up saving the life of a rabbit that was marked to be butchered for meat and pelt. We gone done a good thing!! What you see in some of those seemingly gruesome pictures are just a rabbit pelt being stapled to a fake rabbit cadaver from our friends at Dapper Cadaver (yes, there’s a shop that specializes in this madness…only in Hollywood…)

    Ok then…

  • Shooting The Gorgeous Cindy Taylor For WhoHasItApp.com

    Shooting The Gorgeous Cindy Taylor For WhoHasItApp.com

    Cindy Taylor
    Hope everyone has had a wonderful 2014 so far. So I sort of disappeared for a bit, but hot damn, the new year began and everything took off!!! Hasn’t been much sleep but certainly has been quite a bit of action. There are some cool things in the works that will be revealed in due time, but for now, just wanted to drop a quick few lines. Last week I got to do another shoot for WhoHasItApp, the same client I shot Kyle Williams, Rod Streater, Stacey Dash, Gretchen Rossi, and the others for late last year. This time we got to shoot the beautiful model and TV host Cindy Taylor. Hit the ‘Continue Reading’ to see some of the images from that shoot (all shot with that Samsung NX300 and a 60mm/f2.8 macro lens). Just wanted to share. Hope you enjoy.  (more…)