Last Saturday after working in the Palm Springs area,  I flew over the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. There were some incredibly hugh tents and stages there.  Check out the parking/camping areas, with tents between the cars.  Here are some aerial photographs over the festival.

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 It's Baseball Season!!!  There was a huge crowd on Opening Day and Dodger Stadium looked great.   From the air you can really see how close the stadium is to downtown Los Angeles.  To top it off , the Dodgers beat the Giants.

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Last weekend the PGA Tour came to the Riviera Country Club for the Northern Trust Open.  A local Southern California pro and UCLA alumni, John Merrick won the open on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff.   Here are some pictures during the final round on a beautiful Sunday.

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It was a beautiful day to fly over the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game.  This was the first time the Department of Defense entered a float in the parade called "Freedom is Not Free", to honor the veterans of the Korean War.   Here is the Air Force B-2 Stealth Bomber flying over the float and parade.  Later the B-2  flew over the start of Rose Bowl Game between Stanford and Wisconsin.  What a great way to start the New Year!!!  

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The Breeders Cup Horse Races were held at the Santa Anita Race Track last weekend. We were there and managed to photograph one of the races. Turns out that it was the Juvenile race won by Shanghai Bobby, ridden by Rosie Napravnik who is only the second female jockey to win a Breeders Cup race. These aerial photographs show both the start of the race and just as they cross the finish line. It was pretty exciting to see, even from the airplane.

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NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour made it's final flight over Los Angeles yesterday.  It departed from Edwards AFB , flying over the Lockeed Martin's Skunk works in Palmdale, where we were waiting to photograph it.  After flying over the Bay Area it came into Los Angeles flying over all the landmarks before landing at LAX.  Most of the airspace was off limites for any other airplanes, except over the Port of Long Beach, which put us in a good postion to see the Endeavour flying over the Queen Mary and the USS Iowa.  What an impressive sight from the air.  Here are some photographs over Palmdale and Long Beach.

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California is the ideal place to fly, with great weather and beautiful scenery.  Within a few hours you have the divrsity of the ocean, the mountains, rivers and lakes, the desert and sand dunes.   Over the years I have collected of group of images that look more like paintings and modern art then photographs.  Here is the gallery of my "Aerial Art".  This first photograph from the San Luis Reservoir in Central California.

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Saturday was a beautiful day with hugh crowds and good surf for the "US Open of Surfing" in Huntington Beach.  Also happening on the sand was the "Converse Coastal Carnage"  pro/am skateboarding competition.   Here are some aerial photographs of the events and of the incredible beaches we have in Southern California.

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Most of my aerial photography work is in California, but last week I was fortunate to be working in Oahu, Hawaii.  I rented an airplane out of Honolulu and flew around the island while on the way to my photo site.  The first thing you fly over is Waikiki with all the high rise hotels and traffic.  However, once you pass Diamond Head and go up to the North Shore, the true beauty of the island appears.  The clear blue ocean and white sand beaches against the lush green mountains is an incredible view. We ended the flight over Pearl Harbor with the Arizona Memorial, and just before the 4th of July, it was a sobering, but proud, experience.  To recover from all this hard work, the next day was spent in the ocean.  Here are some aerial photographs of Hawaii with this first one  of the North West corner of Oahu only accesible by dirt roads.

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The LA King's win in the Stanley Cup was celebrated with a big parade in Downtown Los Angeles, which ended at the Staples Center.  There were a lot of fans out celebrating with the team.  You can see one of the LA Kings holding the Stanley Cup on the semi truck in the second picture. 

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