High school playoffs can go one of two ways. Heartbreaking to shoot or a lot of fun.

I shot the first round of baseball playoffs and it went both ways. On one hit actually.

Estancia and Savanna were playing and it just wasn’t Estancia’s day.

This shot of Estancia pitcher Steven Macias kind of says it all. It was right after AJ Kennedy hit a home run in the sixth inning, putting Savanna up 6-0.

Now we have the opposite with AJ Kennedy coming back into the dugout after hitting that home run.

Kind of night and day, it kind of sucks when you see people trying this hard and it’s not working, but at the same time you have to give them credit for not giving up.

Monday I was at the Pantages Theatre photographing Christie Brinkley for her upcoming run as Roxie Hart in the touring company of “Chicago” for The Orange County Register.

Chatting with the LA Times photographer, I got a little nervous. I only had a half hour to shoot, and they were running late. This may come as a surprise, but some celebrities hate having their picture taken.
She couldn’t have been nicer, and she knew how to work a camera too!
She was super rad about my idea of shooting her in front of some graffiti murals around the corner, and that’s where I think I got my best shots.

The thing I was kind of surprised by was how taken she was with being on Hollywood and Vine, she was taking pictures of the signs, the stars on the Walk of Fame and even her ex-husband, Billy Joel’s, which happened to be in front of the theater.

I have to say what I loved most about shooting her was the moment she met a very young fan and was completely unselfconscious about being super silly with him. I think she had yet another crush on her born that very moment and it was so great to see something so sweet during one of those “Only in LA” moments.

I got to shoot the KROQ Weenie Roast y Fiesta Saturday for The OC Register. Looong day. It took a while to go through everything I shot to whittle it down to this.

The bands were mostly great. I think the best thing about radio shows like this is being able to discover bands I’d never heard of before, especially on the second stage. Grouplove was probably my favorite performance of the day. Reminded me of what I listened to in the 90′s. I don’t know if this is a good description, but to me it was like Camper Van Beethoven meets Blind Melon? Great vibe between them and the audience.

I have to say Silversun Pickups runs a close second, though.

Coldplay, visually, made the night though. I loved the Flaming Lips-esque confetti.

It’s been a long time since I’ve shot a radio show like this, and it was nice to run into some old friends, Andrew Youssef, and Paul Hebert.

All of the above and more of my favorites are below.

I went out to ride in Ciclavia yesterday to try and run the whole course and take in the city from such a cool vantage point.

Then I ran into this guy.

So awesome.

I got to hang out with some veeery big fashionistas in West Hollywood yesterday. It was a makeover event hosted by the Fashion Trends Daily blog at Blushington in Sunset Plaza (I swear, this place was in the “‘T’ means time to leave” rich part of the city).

I got to wander the store covering all the people getting their makeup done by some really talented people. The funny thing is, this ended up being my favorite shot.

Sorry about the lack of posts. A few weeks back I had some shots run with a story about Bruce Gleason in the OC Weekly. He heads up the Backyard Skeptics, an Orange County based atheist group that had recently put up a billboard in Midway City in time for Valentine’s day. You can see it below.

I love getting to meet all these interesting people the Weekly sends me out to shoot. I swear it would be so easy for me to spend a whole day just talking to them.

Starting Thursday afternoon, I had a pretty wild run of great assignments.
Starting with this, Aliso Niguel girls soccer playing in the semifinals of regional playoffs before heading to the state championship game.

Friday, I had a fundraiser to cover, also for The OC Register, but then I got a call to help out a friend cover a concert in Hollywood. Can you guess the band?

Saturday morning I had a corporate event, the photos aren’t too exciting, so I’ll leave them out. After that though, I was shooting the Aliso Niguel girls soccer team again in the state championships at Downey High. Can you tell how it turned out for them?
It was really hard work, I feel like I kicked ass on every job. The only thing is it’s taken me until today to fully recover from the madness.

I was asked by The OC Register to cover a Bollywood flash mob that would be performing at The District shopping center in Tustin.

While technically not a real flash mob (they got approval from the property owners and had a sound system set up along with an announcement of the eventin the paper), it was pretty fun.

I was asked to shoot the command staff of the team that handled the Occupy LA eviction last November. Considering all the things that went wrong in the other evictions around the country (UC Davis, Boston, Oakland), I have to give the department props for handling it as thoughtfully as they did.

Credit goes mainly to Deputy Chief Jose Perez, who ran the show from police headquarters across the street. He told me this photo was take only a few feet from where he was standing the night of the eviction.

Last Thursday I shot the basketball game between San Clemente High and Dana Hills High for the OC Register. It was the final home game for San Clemente and it was Senior Night with one unique recognition. Alex Neidl, who has cerebral palsy has been the team manager for San Clemente all four years of high school, and he was going to be able to finally play and score a basket.

Granted, the coaches from the two schools talked about it before the game, they were going to let Alex score the first basket, then have Dana Hills even it up, call a timeout and sub Alex out of the game.

You could tell Alex was pretty stoked about playing, I thought it was pretty awesome to watch and shoot.