Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 09

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 08

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 07

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 06

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 05

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 03

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 04

Japan - Hokkaido Photo Workshop - Day 01

Last year while I was in Japan I went on the Hokkaido Winter Wonderland Photography Workshop put on by Martin Bailey and had a really excellent time. We traveled around Hokkaido taking photos of Japanese Cranes, Swans, Eagles, Deer, and the winter landscape.

This year I was thinking about going on the workshop again, but when I checked into it, I found out that the workshop was already fully booked up. I didn't think too much more about it until a week before the workshop was scheduled to start and I received an e-mail from Martin saying that there was a last minute cancellation. So there was now an open spot on the workshop if anyone could make it to Japan.

I was expecting it to be pretty expensive for a last minute flight to Japan and that would prevent me from going. But when I checked the airfares, it turned out that Singapore Airlines had flights from LA to Tokyo for less then $700 round-trip. So here I am, freezing my butt off in Hokkaido, but I'm having a great time and hopefully getting some great photos, and even learning thing or two.

California - Mammoth Mountain

This last weekend I went to Mammoth Mountain for a couple of days of skiing. All of the rain that Los Angeles was getting hit Mammoth as a ton of fresh snow. You can see how much snow fell on my truck just in the time I was skiing.

California - Yosemite in the Winter

California - Mono Lake

Japan - Cold

I'm on a week long nature photography workshop traveling around the northern island of Japan. So far we've been shooting mostly birds (cranes, eagles, swans) and we've also done some landscape photography. I haven't shot birds before, so it's been fun and pretty challenging. Each day we get up around 4:30 in the morning so that we can be on our bus heading for our morning location before sunrise. It's been pretty cold, but what makes the cold bad is that for the most part there's not a lot of movement involved in taking pictures, so the cold can really sink in. I've been wearing Under Armor top and bottom, a second long spandex on the bottom, sweatpants, snow pants, two pairs of socks, boots with hand warmers in them, hoody, jacket, gloves with finger and a pair of mittens over the gloves.