Travel: Vancouver B.C.

At the beginning of July I went up to Vancouver B.C. to visit my friend Ben.

The photos below are along the route up to Whistler. The photos can be purchased on istockphoto.com

Travel: San Francisco

Last week I headed down to Northern California to shoot a graduation at Humbolt State University. Afterwards I visited my friend Lauren in San Francisco. The weather was dreary most of the week but it managed to be nice a couple days for me to wander around the city.

I love traveling

I returned yesterday from an unexpected and short trip to Phoenix. I had an expiring standby ticket so I headed out to Phoenix and set up a lifestyle photo shoot with some models out there. I love traveling for all the new things I get to see and experience. But I think I love traveling even more for the mindset it puts me in and my renewed appreciation for Portland every time I come back.

Travel: Taglit-Birthright trip to Israel

I suppose it’s a good thing that I haven’t posted to my blog in a while. I’ve been shooting so much that I haven’t had a moment to post my photos.

Back in February I took off for Israel as a part of Taglit-Birthright (an organization that sends Jewish people to Israel for free). Under Birthright there are a bunch of organizations that actually run the trips. The organization I chose was IsraelExperts. I ended up going on the Israel culinary trip, which was the first of its kind of IsraelExperts. I was a little hesitant at first, thinking that the trip was only going to focus on food and that I was going to miss out other aspects of Israel. We did pretty much everything the typical Birthright groups do and then we added the culinary stuff on top of that. While other groups would eat in food courts we had a delicious meals prepared for us from fresh vegetables in a local kibbutz. We went into locals home to eat dinner, ate Shabbat dinner with a Modern Orthodox family, had tea with the Bedouins, prepared our own lunch from fresh vegetables in the Negev desert, and ate strawberries grown in the sky (yes the sky).

I’ll touch on all of this and what I took away from the trip in a future post. For now enjoy the photos and video from the beautiful land of Israel. I had a hard time of selecting what photos to post here. I decided to focus more on the landscapes and environment than the candid photos of people on my trip. To see those photos, as well as more landscape and environment photos, they can be viewed here on my Facebook albums: Album One, Album Two

NYC: start of internship

I haven’t seemed to have be able to find a moment to sit down and share all my photos from the past month in Israel as well as a couple other adventures like going up in a Cessna plane and flying over downtown Portland. I won’t be able to get to them tonight but I do have some photos from my flight to NYC on Sunday. The plane was taking off just as the sun was rising on a beautiful clear day.

I came home for a week after coming back from Israel, to catch up on some work as well as soak up the amazing early spring weather. Then it was back to NYC to start an internship with Nick Onken. At this point I’m planning on staying in NYC till the end of March but if I can find an assistant job or some odd job in the industry I’d be happy to stay longer.

Travels: NYC; Brooklyn Bridge

On Friday I met up with Katie, a friend from Portland who moved to NYC back in the summer, and her friend Ashley. We took a nice walk across the Brooklyn bridge and then headed over to Battery Park to see if we could get out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We missed the last ferry so instead we took the ferry to Staten Island.

The night ended with a great dinner/dance party with Katie’s awesome friends and roommates.  The next morning we woke up to snow on the ground so we headed out for a nice walk in Prospect Park.

Tomorrow I take off for Israel. I’m leaving my computer with my brother in Brooklyn so most likely the next update will be when I return to NYC in March.

(Katie’s awesome roommates)

Travel: Start of my trip

And I’m off. Yesterday I started my month-long trip to Israel. I’m going to Israel with a group called Taglit-Birthright. This group gives the gift of a free trip to Israel if you’re of Jewish heritage. The trip lasts ten days. After the trip I’ll be exploring Israel on my own for a little while. Haven’t decided how long yet.

First stop NYC.  In typical fashion I didn’t pack till the last-minute so the night before my flight consisted of only an hour of sleep. This ended up being a good thing though as I slept pretty much the entire plane right. And yet somehow I managed to wake up just as the sun was rising.

It is nice to finally be back in NYC after attempting to make it here 2-3 times since last year only to have various problems stop me at the last minute. Anyways, time for me to go out exploring.

Ultimate Frisbee: Hanford Howl Tournament 2009

Last weekend I took of with my ultimate frisbee team, The Natural 20s, for an ultimate frisbee tournament, the Hanford Howl, in Richland, WA. While we didn’t win any games it proved to be just as fun as all the tournaments we’ve been to in the past. For the tournament I rented the Canon 2x extender so it made my 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens into a 140-400mm f/5.6 lens which allowed me to get much closer to the action. The big 20 sided die in the photos was made by the awesome David Kurushima.

For more photos from the tournament you can view them on my facebook album: Natural 20s at Hanford Howl 2009. Be sure to check out the video at the end of this post for some Mortal Kombat fighting.

Road Trip: Southern California

After our 17 hour drive to California I woke up the next day and headed out to Corona Del Mar with Lauren to relax on the beach. It was quite nice to bask in 90 degree weather. Later that night I headed into LA and joined my cousin Audrey and her husband Wes at a great exotic sausage grill called Wurstküche. They had all kinds of sausages, even some with rattle snake and alligator meat. I opted for a little less exotic and went with an apple spice one.

I ended the night in Long Beach, visiting my cousin Sam. The next day Sam invited me to a meditation class he was teaching. I’ve done a little meditation on my own in the past but have never been very good at it so is was a great experience having a peaceful environment to practice. The little meditation I have done I’ve found has helped immensely with cleaning up the clutter in my life as well help me be in control of my emotions instead of them being in control of me. All meditation takes is concentrating on your breath.

On Sunday I spent all day doing lifestyle test shoots with local models. I’ll be posting those photos and info about them soon on my professional blog: Isaac Lane Koval.

The trip came to a close with our drive back on Tuesday and Wednesday. This time we took two days to do it, stopping in San Francisco for the night. I’ve been to San Francisco numerous times now but have never managed to stay there longer than a night. Hopefully next time I pass through I will be able to explore more. When we drove into San Francisco there was a huge looming cloud that engulfed us. It felt like were in a disaster movie and should have been escaping from the city instead of driving into it. Apparently this kind of weather is pretty standard in San Francisco. And people always ask how us Portlanders can handle consistently cloudy days.

After our stay in San Francisco we woke up early the next morning to get back on the road. One of the great things about waking up so early is the sunrises you get to see. In between drifting in and out of sleep, in the back seat, I snapped off a couple photos of the sunrise.

This trip made me realize how easy it is for me to just get up and travel. I’m going to make a bigger effort in the months to come to travel more. There’s so many places I want to go, from the Redwoods to Yosemite to Utah, that are really in our backyard.

Traveling: 17-Hour Roadtrip

After a 16-17 hour day of being in the car and at various rest stops along I-5, Lauren, Sasha and I made it to Orange County. It is now 91 degrees outside. Quite a change from Portland’s recent dreary weather.