Well, I’m no longer a resident of Canada and am in limbo. I was hoping to publish this before I actually left but there ended up being so many last minute things that I either a) forgot that needed to be done or b) took until the very last hours of the business week to finish up on.  I left Toronto almost two weeks ago to meet Phil and start a month of traveling through the United States before flying to England.

We spent the first two days driving along hwy 101, down along the Pacific Coast heading to Manhattan Beach for just over a week. I’ve never even visited the west coast in Canada so I’ve never really seen the mountains before and it was gorgeous. Taking our time along the way, spending a night in Big Sur Lodge in a little cabin surrounded by huge Redwoods (I couldn’t help but think about Twin Peaks while there) and then an evening at the Madonna Inn in Saint Luis Obispo. This hotel was nuts! Each room had their own theme and we got to stay in the ‘Misty Rock Room‘, decked out in Rock Walls, a rock waterfall shower and some lovely drapery and bedding straight from the 70′s. I didn’t get the names of all the little parks or stops we did along the way but we did make sure to stop by San Simeon Point to check out the Elephant Seals just before sunset.

Manhattan Beach was a busy week which included Phil’s masterclass on HD-DSLRs, hosted by Neil Smith of RAWworks.  To have something new to show for this masterclass – they went out last Tuesday morning (4.30am) to shoot some horses with a PL-mounted Canon 7D, created by Illya Friedman.  Filmed using both 25mm and 100mm Cooke S4 T2 primes (which are cinema lenses and cost about $20 000 each!), Phil shot his new film ‘A Day at the Races’ which I’ve included below:

A day at the races: Canon 7D with Cooke PL primes from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Of course, on the day of the Oscars, Phil arranged the massive LA HD-DSLR meet up at Venice Beach.  I have never seen so many HD-DSLR shooters at once!  Instead of shooting the insanity of Venice Beach, we were all too busy checking out everyone’s gear and accessories.  One person even had two 7D’s set up to take 3D photos and videos.  You can see all the behind the scenes photos and videos on Phil’s Blog Post of that day.

We left Manhattan Beach early this morning and are now in Austin, Texas  for SXSW where Phil is a panelist talking about HD-SLRs for Filmmaking. After a mini holiday, we’ll finally head back to San Francisco, to the Skywalker Ranch before flying to London.  Below I’ve included a bunch of photos taken while in California that include the drive along the coast as well as some photos I took on my first visit to Santa Monica Pier that I did with our friend, Brian (or @reubal as some of you may know him through twitter).  I’m also thinking about continuing the ‘OCD-way to’ series and have a few in the works but if anyone would like me to write an article on a certain subject about organization (file naming, metadata, storing photos on hard drives, backing up files etc) please let me know what you’d like covered.