Frozen Lake Michigan

Being back in Chicago has been good.  Well, in most ways it has been good.  In one very prominent way it has been bad, which is to say cold.  This has been the worst winter Chicago (and the rest of the country) has seen in years.  I had the chance to escape the cold for a few days for a great shoot down in Houston, but the rest of the time we've just been enduring it.  On one particularly cold day Sarah and I went down to the edge of Lake Michigan to see what a 92% frozen lake looks like.  In a word, beautiful.  It almost made the frostbitten ears worth it. 

Horseback Riding with Subaru

I just finished my second project with AdAsia and Subaru.  The creative teams were fantastic to collaborate with as usual.  We had some unexpected weather related hurdles to overcome when snowstorm "Electra" hit New York.  But we rose to the challenge and with the help of a great team we created a wonderful final image in which you can't even tell that it's winter.  Big thanks to Nancy at Frog Hollow Farm for furnishing the location and the excellently trained horses (one of whom was an Olympic hopeful).

Road Home to Chicago

Once Sarah and I left Los Angeles, the goal was to get back to Chicago as quickly as possible.  Despite not wanting to get back to the worst winter in Chicago in decades, we had a job to get to in New York.  We decided to fly rather than risk getting stuck in the snow with Timmy so we had to drop him off in Chicago first and make our flights.  The last several days were longer with an average of 8-10 hours of driving a day, but we did manage to stop at a couple of cool places like The Salton Sea and Petrified National Forest for picnics and photos.

Pacific Coast Highway

On our recent road trip, hands down our favorite part of this trip was the four days we spent driving down the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco down to Los Angeles.  The route took us through Monterey, which is now one of our favorite places on earth since it is where Sarah and I got engaged, and through Big Sur, another of our favorite places because it is simply amazing.  It's so incredible to have majestic redwood forests adjacent to beautiful beaches.  And, 70 degrees in January was a bit better than the slew of plolar vortices that were attacking Chicago.