Last week I journeyed to sunny, Southern California. I was on a bit of a personal journey. I went for a hands on class to learn some new skills. Honestly, I didn’t fully know the purpose of this journey other than I knew I needed to do it. In the end, I came home with new skills a d endless processing & thinking.

I am not ready to share some of the finer details from this trip, but I will share some of my favorite photos and adventures while not in my class. A note on these photos and travel in general. Whenever I am in a new place I try to seek out the things that I/we do not have at home. Given I live in icy, cold Minni Snowta and its -17 degrees as I write this, I think you see straight away that I spent a bit of time at the beach. I also sought out a small, local fish market, ran on the beach, tried endless coffee shops and found and fulfilled an obsession with spicy chicken sandwiches.

Hope you enjoy. As always, click on any image to go to slideshow mode and view larger!

This is my favorite image from the trip. I like it in both color and black and white. The color image just transports me to a warm beach. I processed the black and white with a hint of grain and texture to it to give it a timeless feel. I could stare at these all day.

Flights, fish markets, beer and good vibes all around. I took every opportunity outside of class to enjoy the incredible weather and location.

While there I stumbled into what appears to be an obsession with hot chicken sandwiches and distinctive signage. It appears that these two things go together and cannot be separated. It gave me something to do at night as I was by myself. For the record, my favorite was Dave’s Hot Chicken. The Dave’s sauce, kale coleslaw and pickle choice pushed it over the top.

I did get to see some old friends while there. Errin and Sabrina drove down to see me! I haven’t seen them in something like 9 years. I could have talked all night…tacos and friends, it doesn’t get much better than that! Thanks again Errin and Sabrina for taking time to drive down to see me!

Parting Shot and Thought: While I did not fully know why I went to So Cal, I am thankful for good intuition. It led me there and I am going home with an incredible amount of new skill, new thoughts and new & renewed friendships. I am thankful.

For my photo geek friends, I flew light to California and only took my small, Ricoh GRIIIX camera. All shots were taken with this camera, shot RAW and processing in Capture 1.