From today’s excursion to Waimea Canyon here on Kauai, Hawaii. Shot this mystic view on the way down from from one of the wettest places on earth, Mount Waiʻaleʻale – a mountain with an elevation of 1,569 m and an average of 11,500 mm rain per year. Noticed that NASA has an observatory and what also may be a lab facility in the area.

For lunch, we thoroughly enjoyed succulent, seared Ahi (tuna) tacos with mango avocado salsa at the unassumingly styled yet ever-so aptly named, Island Taco in Waimea village. Can highly recommend a lunch there.

Got some really good footage today with a GoPro mounted on the front end of the hood of our Wrangler (jeep),

It’s raining several times a day – mostly short showers with light drizzles before and after. Lots of little fluffy clouds making for dramatic sunsets.

Shot this with my iPhone during yesterday’s excellent trail trek along the bluffs that outline the dramatic southwest coast of Kauai. Used the Pano mode and some post production trickery to get the most out of that small, but oh so sensitive sensor.

It’s soon Christmas Eve here in the North Pacific. Surreal. No Santa, but many of the locals are wearing his helpers hats. We’ll celebrate Hawaiian style with no Santa – but at a luau with dinner at a beachfront restaurant we stumbled onto and made reservations at yesterday afternoon. Of course there will be a few holiday, well-wishing calls to both immediate and extended families and friends.

Wish you and your family happy holidays – however and wherever you celebrate.

While Elle and I walked from Santa Monica Beach to Venice Beach early-ish this morning, I reflected on how little has changed in Venice. At least along the Boardwalk. Of course, they didn’t sell medical marijuana licenses back in my day – but in the grand scheme of things, for better or worse, very little has changed since I was Elle’s age. That’s almost forty years with the same mix of ramshackle storefronts, homeless, musicians, artists, skaters, surfers and street hawkers.

After a hefty breakfast near the beach, we walked eastward to Abbot Kinney Boulevard, arguably the trendiest/chicest/hippest shopping strip in Southern California. The above scene was from outside one of many cafes around lunch time today.

Venice Pier, early yesterday evening. I was out shooting surfers, which were few, and as the sun set in the Pacific, I found myself once again mesmerized, nay, hypnotized by the wide palette of hues and how smooth the in-between gradients joined them together. The clarity is amazing and though I haven’t yet looked at my shots and footage, I’ve surely captured some pretty good stuff.

The shot of me above was taken by Noah Youhee Won, a local photographer and graphic artist that couldn’t help but get a couple of images of me and the pier as silhouettes.

For more than a year now, I’ve been contracted to shoot PR and marketing photos of Scandinavia’s most spectacular hotel, Clarion Hotel & Congress Malmö Live. I’ve shot food, drinks, rooms, suites, bars and a whole bunch of other particulars – both throughout the final months before the grand opening and for the first six months afterwards.

One of many individual projects was to help market the hotel’s very first Christmas show. So, I scripted, filmed and produced the broadcast commercial and shot a slew of Press and PR images to help the marketing team generate interest and help sell tickets. The show has been sold out for quite some time now and I saw the first of four shows the other night. It’s certainly one of the most spectacular shows I’ve ever seen and surely one of the biggest productions ever produced in Malmö. I was invited as a guest, but after eating a belly full of sumptuous American and Swedish inspired Christmas food, I just couldn’t sit still. Above is one of the shots I got with my phone. Couldn’t make up my mind which I was more impressed with; my camera phone’s ability to shoot decently in such relative low light or the show’s Vegas level production.

About a half a year ago, our daughter Elle saw a documentary on YouTube (where else, right?) that disclosed some extremely discomforting facts about the food industry in general and more specifically about how horrifically bad farm animals are treated throughout their miserable lives.

Right there and then, Elle decided to remove meat – all forms of animal meat – from her diet. Shortly thereafter, her mother Charlotte joined in and about a month or so later, I too took the plunge and removed chicken, pork, beef and all other forms of meat from my list of edibles.

Charlotte and I still eat seafood and shellfish, though. I mean, I completely concur with Elle in not financially supporting the food industry’s unacceptable methods and gut-wrenching practices. But to stop eating shrimp and sushi? That’s taking it a little too far. and probably ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.

Recently, Elle’s taken her self-imposed dietary constraints even further by insisting that we eat less dairy products – and to thereby extend our moral stance against the often unhealthy production processes used to produce stuff like milk, yoghurt, butter, cream, and cheese.

As I’m sure some of you can imagine, this is by no means an uninteresting culinary challenge we’re in the midst of. And though I often feel I fall short in concocting and serving meals to the girls that look nice, taste good but are unquestionably healthy, I’m slowly learning about all kinds of new fascinating ways to create food that caries health benefits way beyond the dinner table.

The above photos is from a recent food session focused on so-called pintxos.

Though I’m not a hardcore Star Wars nerd, I’d lie if I didn’t admit to having a childish level of excitment about J.J. Abrams take on George Lucas space opera, arriving in (US) theaters in about two weeks.

The faux Sci-Fi tech is certainly intriguing, but more importantly – at least to me – are the over-the-top, incredulously bombastic visuals. Escapism at its best.

Buddy Ken Wegas sent me the above photo this morning from the premiere of the very first Star Wars film at Mann’s Chinese Theatre on May 25, 1977. I’m there, somewhere in that crowd, together with Marcos and his father, director and writer, Antonio Santean. I’d been babysitting his son Marcos for a few months, and as a bonus, Antonio kindly invited me to see the premiere showing of a movie starring mostly unknowns – but that had been generating so much buzz and that almost instantly created fans all over the world. Photo credit: unknown.

Last Friday, I spent a couple of late afternoon hours high above the sea shooting cocktails and scrumptious meals in the sky bar and Kitchen & Table dining room at Clarion Hotel & Congress Malmö Live.This is one of their signature cocktails, “John Doe”. Don’t recall all the particulars, but bourbon and chocolate was definitely in the recipe. Chocolate and whiskey. You just can’t go wrong with that combo.

Earlier this evening, by sheer happenstance, I stumbled onto an episode of Groucho Marx’s classic series, “You Bet Your Life” from 1959 with my mother in it. She appears at 6:59 together with an elderly gentlemen.

I’ve always had a vague memory of hearing that she’d been in one of his game shows. But until today, I just wasn’t sure which.

Apparently, some heroic person has taken the time to upload all episodes and credit all of Groucho’s contestants. So after just a few clicks, there she was, a 26 year old Ina Solveig Anders (my mother’s stage name). I’ve not created it, but here’s her page at .

I haven’t heard my mother’s voice in almost 40 years, so watching her on a late 1950s TV show – more or less five years before I was born – was certainly strange, albeit exciting.

Elle was studying for a math test when I interrupted her with this news flash, but I have a feeling she’s going to revisit the show on her own time to see more of the obvious resemblance she shares with her grandmother.

I have no idea who the fellow she was competing with was. But he most certainly looked like he could have been her grandfather.

So I’ve been freelancing for about 16 years now. Our small family business has the highest possible credit rating and no bank loans or debts. Heck, we don’t even have checking account. And like all good corporate citizens, we pay our business (local and government) tax each month on time – with barely any bitching. And thanks to a really good financial consultant, our company books are well-balanced.

Earlier this fall, I had an assignment for Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs via Sweden’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see a post about that most challenging, albeit interesting gig. And with the exception of being hired by Malmös city council on a few occasions, working with the Swedish government was both gratifying and surprisingly straightforward. But like IKEA, Ericsson or any other large organization that I’ve worked with in the past, it’s key to pace yourself and adjust the volume and rhythm to suit their tune.

Anyway, it’s now been a while since I sent my invoice to the Government Offices in Stockholm – to, in effect, my government which I help finance via  taxes. Optimistically, the administrator/controller responsible for payments to the state’s suppliers (like myself) will pay my invoice in an equally orderly fashion as I am expected to pay taxes. Not holding my breath, though.