Had the pleasure of seeing the anchovy swarm out at La Jolla Cove yesterday, and cut this from some of the GoPro footage I got.  Enjoy.

It would’ve been the start to a great day if only Randy’s plane had actually flown to its destination instead of doing an emergency return to San Diego.  Despite the drama though I did capture a decent sunrise with the GoPro up at Dana Point, and Delta did return Randy to me safe and sound.  All’s well that ends well.

Christmas may be dominating the news, the mail, the calendar, the living room, and, well, everything, but as a Public Service Announcement I’d like to remind you that we’re now only thirteen days away from the 28th annual Penguin Plunge at Del Mar.

Mmmm…donuts.  Mmmm…lifeguards.

We’re planning to make this year our eighth start for a new year with a “refreshed mind and a slightly numb body,” to quote the stylish certificate that comes with the donuts and coffee.

Photos from previous years are posted under the tag ‘Penguin Plunge‘, and a video we made from the 2013 event is hosted at YouTube.

Randy and I went to La Jolla Cove this afternoon to shoot his annual welcome back video for this year’s class.  Normally I wouldn’t bother posting those here, but we got so many great shots with the seal and fish that I had to share it here.  The seal sea lion in particular just parked in front of me at a distance of 4-6 feet for nearly two minutes.  I may recut the footage without the welcome back bits later, but for now, just sharing some work that I’m proud of and you might enjoy.

DAWN PATROL AT LA JOLLA COVE from Chuck Hartley on Vimeo.

The same video is also on YouTube, for those of you preferring that platform.

Been spending a lot of time lately with two new toys: a GoPro Hero 2 camera and an HP laptop computer running Windows 8.  Love them both, but the key words for the last month have been “learning curve.”

For the last few years I’ve usually taken photos with a Canon S5 IS, which I still have and love.  It’s problem is that it’s a bit large and I’m a bit paranoid having it around water.  Enter the GoPro.  Tiny, and safe around water.  Getting it tiny though required that all the switches and dials and screens be gone.  It has only two buttons, and a small LCD indicator.  No view finder, no image preview, just point and shoot in one of the different modes.  Once it’s set up it’s great to use, and I’m having a lot of fun with it, both for video and still photography, but it’s certainly taking some time to learn what it can do with it.

The same for the new laptop.  It’s faster and has more memory, and well, it’s a laptop with a docking station for when I need a full-size keyboard and mouse (like processing photos) which my previous workstation was a big clunky tower about four years old.  It’s also running Windows 8, which I think has gotten a bad rap.  Similar to the switch from the Canon to the GoPro, there was a learning curve when I first encountered Windows 8.  It was steep, with new commands and new options.  After a month though, I don’t miss the Start button, and wonder if I could ever go back to not having the live tiles keeping me up to date.  It could certainly use a few improvements, and I look forward to having more software completely integrated into the start page rather than having to switch to the desktop environment, but especially when I’m at my desk with a couple of monitors running it’s a vast improvement, and I’m very happy I made the leap.

Having a great holiday and hope you are too.

While Diego rips to shreds what he thinks is the ear of that special bunny, here’s some Easter cute.

[via the NSFW BillInExile]

Just a little multimedia help for the kiddies who never read books.

[via Seduced by the New]