One of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a while, very creative:

Ever wonder what goes into filming a food commercial? How about screwing the pizza down to the table . . .







A short on the brutal reality of the oil spill on a small community:

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Inspirational

1. A photographer was fed up with seeing lower quality images of the volcano and so took it upon himself to go get some good images of the eruption in Iceland. That’s the kind of personal project I admire. This guy wasn’t getting paid to do this, he just wanted to do it for himself.

2. A protestor is arrested for blowing bubbles at a G20 protest.

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Funny

1. Love this one. This guy is having too much fun. Imagine being this happy about your job (although I’m sure this isn’t his real job).

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Film/Animation

1. A cool little animation using motion matching software boujou to track in the old Mario Brothers Game into a real time scene.

2. Great little animation that transitions between different movies, see if you notice which ones they reference.

You can find and download a copy of these photos at flickr: HERE.

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If you download any (or just enjoy this website) and are feeling generous, you can click the donate button in the sidebar to the right to help maintain this website.

Steve’s picture deserves to stand alone because, after hearing about Dan Lyons from my blog a few days ago, he cut and donated his hair to Locks for Love.

Steve cut his hair for Locks of Love.

I’m really enjoying my experience with the new lens. I’ve never had a telephoto zoom so I am learning where I need to position myself (usually pretty far away) to the subject to get the shots I’m looking for. It is pretty heavy but I also have a Manfrotto monopod that I’ll use for it on any wedding jobs, etc. to take the weight off of my arms.

The flight from yesterday was incredible. My best climb was at 6:30pm! Everyone launched after about 5pm. It’s crazy how late in the day it was. I was cruising at cloud base (6,000′) towards Chattanooga for several miles before I turned back and did some aerobatics. It was enough that I could hardly lift my head up when I landed, my neck was so tired from holding my head up during the aerobatics because of the G’s I was pulling. I did wingovers all the way down from about 4,500′.

Well, yesterday I was driving to the bank and saw a guy who wasn’t hitch hiking, he looked like he was up to something, on a mission, walking on down the shoulder of the country road. I thought, if he’s still on this road on my way back from the bank, I’m giving him a ride, even though he’s not sticking his thumb out. I’ll just offer it.

He had made it a ways down the road by the time I was on my way back and stopped to ask him if he needed a ride some where. He looked relieved as it was already incredibly hot and humid and said, ‘yes please.’ It didn’t take but a few minutes to realize my hunch, that this guy was on a mission, was correct. Dan Lyons has been walking across the country since February for Locks of Love, which is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis (you can donate HERE).

Dan Lyons (photo by Lucas Ridley).

Dan is an incredible guy, he’s taking the longest way possible, it seems, across the country: diagonally starting from Washington state down to Florida, so he’s ‘almost’ done. I invited him to stay at my house last night and he was great company, a real inspiration, and got me thinking about a similar trip I’ve been brainstorming about for some time. He had plenty of stories! One thing he pressed upon me was, if you want something bad enough you can do it. Every one told him he couldn’t do this trip, it was crazy, but he said, “See you in August” and is on his way to accomplishing his goal despite people’s pessimism.

Dan is 56 years old, a retired school teacher, and has been doing the trip entirely solo. He did say he’s stayed and been invited into 31 homes since he started, and he tries to stay in a motel once a week to get a good nights sleep. He’ll start walking as early as 4:30am with his 30 lb backpack to beat the heat, and try and be done for the day before noon or 1pm. He started by doing 30 miles a day and said he’s only taken 3 days off from walking since February! When he left this morning he was going another 8 miles up the road to another hang glider pilots house who I connected him up, Claire, thanks Claire for keeping the chain going!

I asked him if he trained for the trip before he started and he replied “Nah, it’s just walking.” Ha! This guy is great and it was an honor to meet someone like him. He doesn’t have a blog but he tries to meet with local newspapers along the way to spread the word. He is doing this trip in honor of his daughter who passed away from breast cancer at the age of 17. He said she was always interested in traveling and they had even talked about doing a trip like this together when she got better, so he’s doing the trip by himself in her honor. You’re an inspiration Dan, keep it up, you’re almost there!

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Film/Animation

1. I really enjoy Patrick Bovin’s work, this one is no different.

For some reason the embedded video isn’t working, here’s the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVYOCMpJRY

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Inspirational

1. I was introduced to what I think is the most famous street graffiti artist recently. I really enjoy all his work: Banksy.

2. This is being reblogged from Francesco Mugnai’s blog. I really love seeing photos like this that you just want to keep staring at them.

DENIS DARZACQ

IVO MAYR

JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN

LI WEI

LISSY ELLE

NAM

ROMAIN LAURENT

MISS ANIELA

TOBY BURROWS

MOHAMMED AMINE NASSERI, MAGDA KLUKOWSKI

So we decided to try for Mount Elbert which is the tallest mountain in Colorado at 14,433′. We spent the night close to the trailhead in the well established camping area of the San Isabel National Forest. We woke up early to start up the standard route, the Northeast Ridge.

It was beautiful hiking, up until we were postholing through snow near the treeline at 12,000′. It was really slow going through that area. Carson even resorted to ‘ninja rolling’ to get through the terrain, which means he looked like he was practicing the stop, drop, and roll. Punching through the snow with almost every step, up to your hip, was exhausting and felt like you were falling through a trap door every time because it happened so quickly.

The rest of the hike was gorgeous. We only saw two other people all day. On the way down I decided to try some glissading which you can see in the video was a ton of fun (and by my crazy laugh). I think it probably took about 9 hours of hiking roundtrip, including rests.

We also went and saw the Great Sand Dune National Park and we also headed over to Golden, CO and I got to check out the flying launch there, which is also named Lookout Mountain. Wish I had brought my gear for flying, next time I will. We also got to see JB Smoove in stand up in Denver, he’s probably most famous for THIS scene in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

The crew with Elbert in the background

Follow the yellow br... I mean sign

Carson trying to get out of a posthole and Eric mocking him by walking away.

Just out of the treeline.

Carson.

Eric.

Summit.

Leaving the summit in our dust.

Shortly after this steeper section we started glissading

Watch your step.

BJ Herring climbing out.

Liftoff.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

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Inspirational

1. I’ve always been interested in small space architecture and this short video shows a great example of it:

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Funny

1. The new Batman movies were great, but also ripe for parading

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Film/Animation

1. In only two weeks this has gotten a quarter million views and a lot of buzz on the internet. Well done short

2. An editor talks about some of the nominations for best editing (this is a bit old, was before the oscars this year)

The video is of our dog, Lola, who we adopted during our 3 month stay in France after I graduated from college. It was an incredible stay, in the small town of Menerbes, actually right where A Good Year was filmed, and Ridley Scott has a house in that area too. Anyways, it’s a beautiful area that actually resembles the landscape of the Cumberland plateau with the Luberon nearby.

We began our relationship with Lola as many people have: she was stealing food out of our kitchen after she opened the door to our house. Since we were vacationing we were her perfect companions because we didn’t have much to do each day so we obliged her by playing fetch with her favorite toy, a rock, any rock. There are endless Lola tales that we heard around the village of her shenanigans.

One tale was of her sneaking into a man’s house and eating the old baguettes that were in a bag he would take to the horses. He caught her, yelled, and as she raised her head to ran, it got caught in the handle of the bag and she took out of the door carrying the entire bag of bread swinging from her neck as he chased her down the narrow, old street.

She is by far the best souvenir I’ve ever had from any trip I’ve ever taken. Angela and I got to a point and just couldn’t imagine not taking her with us, and in her current situation where her owners where split up, they wanted us to take her. As well as the whole village I think.

One of the last days of our stay I walked up to the cashier at the grocery (who took about a 3 hour break in the middle of the day every day, like every business in town) to pay for my stuff. Lola, as she usually did, had followed me, and as she unusually did, she was sitting at the open door of this old, little grocery. Typically, she would have tried to sneak in and snag food off of the low shelves and run out. But, she was being good, and I mentioned how we were taking her back with us, in my broken french. The cashier and her friend looked at each other and laughed. I said, ‘no really.’ Her eyes got bigger for one second and let that sink in and then she smiled. It was a smile where she didn’t say anything, but just looked at me and grinned before handing me my groceries. That grin revealed what we already knew: Lola is a handful.

Her burping is like clock work. She will burp within 2 minutes of finishing her dinner. Whether it’s an audible burp or not, or big or small, is another story. What you see in the video was caught over the last year or so as I would randomly remember to get my camera out and try and get her to sit still for a minute. The funny thing is she burps all the time, I’ve missed so many good ones, but after dinner it’s guaranteed so that’s when I’d get the camera out. Hope you enjoy this silly video.

Tortillas. That’s what I picked. I thought it might as well feed me if I’m going to be spending time trying to get good at it. Plus, I enjoy the tactile nature of making tortillas. Like the resistance you get when you push your bare hands into the soft dough, like kneading bread dough but it doesn’t seem as intimidating as bread-making, there’s a roughness and simplicity to tortillas where my lack of skill could possibly hide until I master it, if I ever do.

Tonight will be the second night I try my hands at this goal. I picked a random, simple recipe online you can find here. Maybe later I’ll experiment a little more with other recipes, make a comment below if you know of a good one or what your preference is. I would also encourage everyone to pick something like this and have it as a little pet project. I’m sure everyone reading this is already good or even great at plenty of things in their respective lives, but pick something random and have little experience with. Maybe you already have something like this going on. If so, what is it? If not, pick something and let me know what it is in the comments below.

I’m looking forward to the experience of something small and simple as tortilla making. There won’t be any tests at the end, it’s only for myself (and my wife who gets to eat them too) – it’s the journey that counts, as in most things. The couple of mountains I’ve climbed has turned a figurative lesson into  a literal one: It’s not getting to the summit that counts but the journey to get there. And if you don’t enjoy the journey, what makes you think you’ll enjoy the summit!?

So what is your tortilla?

It’s kind of a pain to carry around this camera all the time, so a lot of what we did I couldn’t capture, but I hope you enjoy watching what we did do. What you see was mainly captured with my Canon 7D.






For anyone traveling to Chicago I would recommend doing a couple of the things we did:

• Check out Millenium Park (where ‘the bean’ is) and the Art Institute right next to it
• Head over to the Hancock Building to the top floor for a cocktail as the sun sets on the city
• See the Blue Man Group
• Go to the Wiener Circle for a late night hot dog and some verbal abuse (this place was featured in an episode of This American Life)
• Explore the city – there are random pieces of Picasso and other art throughout the city
• Take a run beside the lake
• Go visit some Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in Oak Park
• Eat a Giordanos pizza