SporlederArt | Blog

Orange Coast Magazine

2008-08-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to be profiled in the Artist Spotlight section of this months Orange Coast Magazine. I was contacted a few months ago while in the Philippines and although communication was a bit sketchy at the time, it all worked out. From the magazine itself:

"Orange Coast magazine is the premier local lifestyle magazine of the region, bringing together Southern California's most affluent coastal communities through smart, fun, and timely editorial content, compelling photographs and quality advertising. Each issue features an award-winning blend of celebrity and newsmaker profiles, service journalism, and authoritative articles on dining, fashion, home design, and travel. As Orange County's only paid subscription local lifestyle magazine with circulation figures guaranteed by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, Orange Coast is the definitive guidebook into Orange County's luxury lifestyle."

My actual page, with a photo taken on Christmas Day at Strands:

Thiksey Gompa in India

2008-07-28T22:15:00.001-07:00

Pilipinas

2008-05-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

What to say.... Thousands of islands, friendly people and amazing underwater scenery. Oh, and cock fights!

India Part IV

2008-04-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

Our final destination in India was to the high Himalayan region of Ladakh.
Also known as “Little Tibet” it sits only about 45 miles from the border of Tibet and is made up of mostly Ladakhis and Tibetan refugees. The capital city of Leh sits at 12,000 ft., which is a nice little shock coming from sea level and polluted air of Delhi. I found my self-gasping for air as if I was a 2 pack a day smoker half way through the Boston Marathon.
Ladakh itself is something else; there are beautiful thousand-year-old Monasteries perched on top of little cliffs all over the Indus valley, which Leh sits in. Being in Ladakh truly felt like being back in Tibet, with yak butter candles burning in the monasteries, beautiful blue skies and terrain that looks like Mars. The flight into Leh brings you over some huge sections of the Himalayas and has to be one of the most spectacular flights there is.
We did however go up there in Mid-April, thinking that it might be a little cold but clear skies, instead we were welcomed by a few inches of snow and temperatures in the mid 20’s. That also got a little frigid on our 150 km Vespa ride to Lamayuru over several 14,000 ft. passes. Claire and I let Matty talk us into the whole endeavor and it ended up being beautiful, cold, painful and cold. The ride itself was spectacular but freezing, my knock off North Face jacket was not doing much. We hired an “expert” mechanic to come with us incase of a serious problem but instead he pretty much created the only serious problem that we had. While riding home on our final day there was some freezing rain dropping and the guy decided to gun it on a piece of road that was transitioning from pavement to gravel. Needless to say, Claire who was riding on the back of his bike felt the brunt of it when she was thrown of the back and skid on the left knee for a good 10 yards. Luckily she wasn’t hurt too bad, but she may have a nice little scar to remind her of our lovely Vespa ride through the Himalayas.
Our last day was also the day that the Chinese torch was going to be ran through Delhi, the capital of all of India which also meant there were going to be some huge protests. The people of Leh had a huge Free Tibet rally which was moving to say the least. I have never been a part of something where so many people expressed so much passion and anger for the lose of their homeland, really inspiring.
All in all Ladakh was beautiful, again another place that I would have loved to have spent more time, but with the schedule that I set it’s just not possible. Maybe someday I’ll actually slow my trips down to a more human pace….. Nah.

Next stop… The Philippines!

India Part III

2008-04-20T03:47:00.000-07:00

After leaving Nepal, we flew directly to the holy town of Varanasi. Varanasi is located on the Ganges River and is the most Holy place in all of India for Hindus. It is considered highly sacred and fortunate to have your ashes burned and sent afloat down the Ganges. We stayed at a hotel that was just two ghats away from the famous burning ghat, which is where 24 hours a day, bodies are brought out with their remaining loved ones, dipped in the Ganges and then set on fire. It takes about an hour for the bodies to burn, after which their ashes are sent down the Ganges. The remarkable thing is that it’s so holy that it’s great luck to bath in it, drink it and pretty much do everything in it. As you can see in one of the pictures below, the people whose families cannot afford for them to be cremated are just dumped in the river. So you will literally having people swimming and bathing while 10 yds. Away a dead bloated body floats by while birds pick at the rotting flesh. Ahhhhh, India. Varanasi was the most full blown feeling of pure Indian chaos that I have felt while here, I love the place but a few days is enough for me.
Amritsar, which is home to the Golden Palace, is the most sacred site for the Sikhs. This was another fascinating place, that had people bathing (in much cleaner water) at all hours of the day. We only had half of a day there so we made our pilgrimage at 4am and spent most of the morning there. I want to learn more about the Sikh religion, but from what I could tell there was a lot of swords, big turbines and even bigger people. The Sikhs are by far the largest people we saw in India.
Our next and final stop before heading high into the Himalayas was Dharmasala. Dharmasala is the home to the Tibetan government in exile and also a hot bed of activity since the start of the recent clashes between The Chinese and Tibetans. Everywhere you turn is another Free Tibet sign and more information about charities/causes/organizations/etc… It really felt good to be there during such an important time, after being to Tibet 3 years ago I feel like I really have somewhat of an idea of what these people are fighting to regain. Go figure, the Dalai Lama was in the Stated giving a speech, but there were still a lot of influential people in Dharmasala at the time and it was great enough to be in such a positive place.

Nepal

2008-04-20T03:42:00.000-07:00

Nepal started off as an adventure to meet up with one of Matt’s family friends who does land sculptures/Installations all over the world and whom happened to be finishing one in Jomsom in northern Nepal. However, after figuring out that it would take 3 days of travel just to get there and it was freezing, we opted out and just stuck with the Katmandu Valley.
It was a good choice because we got to see everything that Katmandu had to offer and also do a small little 2-day trek to a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery called Namo Buddha. The trek to Namo Buddha was good because it wasn’t too strenuous but allowed us to see some small Nepalese villages and get a brief feeling of the country life during our time in Nepal. We also got to sleep at the Monastery and eat all of our meals with the monks in the mess hall, a very cool experience, although no shortage of dough in that place. Every meal that we ate had some sort of large dough with it and it did wonders for the stomach situation!
All in all we had a short 6 days in Nepal but it was a great time and definitely left me wanting to see more and with some luck someday I’ll be back.

India Pt. II

2008-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, updating this thing has really been much more difficult than I had intended. I know I was saying that on the last blog, but now it has really gotten hard. I have fallen way behind in editing my photos, but I guess that is a good thing in the long run!
After celebrating Holi in Jaipurk, we made our way down to a town called Bundi. Bundi is a sleepy little Brahmin blue town with a 16th century palace sitting on a hillside above it. The palace was overtaken by monkeys and bats in the last few hundred years and at sunset the bats stream out of the castle by the thousands and head into the surrounding forests to feed. Bundi was a great town to sit back and enjoy the slow life for a few days.
After Bundi, it was off to Jodhpur, the actual famous blue town of India. Jodhpur was great, after enjoying the slow way of life in Bundi we found ourselves just wanting to return to the tourist free chill town. A few days later we headed up to Bikaner to check out the self proclaimed “8th wonder of the world” Karni Mata, The Rat Temple. There is actually a temple where the people of this town worship rats (who are reincarnations of their relatives). To be fair they are more like mice, but the first time you walk in the place it really spokes you to have rats running across your feet. It’s also a wee bit scary to think that you are in India, and god only knows what kind of diseases these things are carrying. That being said, I still thought it would be a good idea to drink from the milk that they are offered, it is supposed to bring you good luck, I’ll let you know if it works.
We met up with my buddy Matt in Delhi, did some sightseeing and were off to our next adventure…
The pictures are still filtering in but coming in a few days (sorry Mom and Dad) Kathmandu, Nepal. Spent a few days in the capital and then a few days out in the villages. When we get to Dharmasala in 4-5 days I am going to put up another good sized blog with everything from Nepal.

Namaste

India!

2008-03-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

Where to begin? First off, I would like to apologize to anyone who has been checking this on a regular basis. I originally thought that I would be updating my blog every few days, but I grossly under estimated the number of Wi-Fi “Hotspots” there are here in India, that being said…

India has been unreal, Unlike any place I have traveled to before. In the first day alone our taxi driver drove over and killed a puppy, I was electrocuted 3 times and got over 80 mosquito bites (stopped counting at 75, and 15 of those were on my face!) Needless to say, after talking myself into thinking I had malaria for 2 days, my trip to India had begun. It has now been over a week and it just keeps getting better everyday. The people are so friendly, and curious about what your doing, thinking, etc. There are of course a lot of beggars, touts, scam-artists and a whole bunch of other things but I don’t think that any other country really has the raw energy of life that India has. Anything and everything happens here.

I am going to try and post more pictures, but sightseeing all day and then editing 500 photos a night can be a bit much on you! Here are some shots, hopefully they can hold you over until later.

Japan

2008-03-12T04:37:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Japan this afternoon and have about a 24 hour layover before continuing my journey to India tomorrow. I decided not to go into Tokyo but to spend the evening in Narita, which is close to the airport. Here's a shot from the temple below, tomorrow....... INDIA!

Big, Nasty, Dirty, Firing Seal

2008-02-26T23:35:00.000-08:00

Shots from Seal

XXXL Creek

2008-02-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

Creek was probably the biggest I have ever seen before, check it out!

Published

2008-01-15T17:55:00.001-08:00

I had a small article published in the latest volume of Light Leaks Magazine. It's a magazine about the art of photography using only Toy cameras (Holga, Diana, etc...). You can take a look at my page that was published below, it's got a variety of my Holga pictures from Tibet, taken 2 years ago.

Firing Torrey Pines...

2008-01-15T16:47:00.000-08:00

Got some shots last weekend in a good sized swell. 10ft + and plenty 'o off-shores. Really tough to shoot, but here are a couple that I liked.

And........ a little NorCal style to close out the photo session!

Biggest Swell of the Year?

2007-12-06T10:42:00.000-08:00

Or a lot of hype? I am leaning towards the second option at this time! A week in the making, claims of 15-20ft waves and................... it was good, but not epic. The wind was all over it, tides were jacked but still got out with some friends and took some pics. Fun times

San Clemente Sunset

2007-11-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

Tonights sunset at the San Clemente Pier

Salton Sea

2007-11-27T23:17:00.000-08:00

Since I have been in Palm Desert for a few days, I thought that today was a perfect opportunity to head out to the Salton Sea for a few hours. The Salton Sea was a real estate developers dream in the earl '60s until everything fell apart and was left for dead. Today, things sit in ruin up and down the enter sea but make for some great photos.

Afterwards I headed for Salvation Mountain. This is a truly unique place, built by one man over the course of the past 22 years. Using mud, hay and donated paint, Leonard Knight has created a mountain filled with biblical scriptures which he has painted on by hand. Just google "Salvation Mountain" for more info, a wild place:

After a great time a Salvation Mountain, we headed back to the Salton Sea and were treated to one of the best sunsets I have seen in a long long time!

NEW HOUSING!!!

2007-10-30T20:10:00.001-07:00

This purchase has been about 12 years in the making. I have always wanted a surf housing for my camera since I started bodyboarding about 12 years ago. Since then, there has been transitions to surfing, changes in where I've lived but the desire for the housing was always there.

Below are some shots from my first session this afternoon. I had some issues with the focus, but I think I have a lot of kinks to work out before I start getting anything decent. Hopefully!

Fire Swell

2007-10-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

As I am sure most of you know, Southern California has been battling some severe wildfires over the past 5 days. The combination of intense heat, howling Santa Ana winds and close to no rain in the past 2 years has lead to the perfect fire storm. What hasn't been reported though was that along with these winds, a SW and NW swell hit SoCal at the same time as the Santa Anas, producing some of the best waves I have seen in a long time.

All day Monday I drove up and down the Orange County coastline, taking pictures of multiple spots. Check it out:

Creek:

If you were wondering whether or not San O ever barrels, the answer is yes:

Trestles:

Strands:

Lowers (slight off-shores):

San Clemente Secret Spot:

Havasupai & The Wave

2007-09-27T00:48:00.001-07:00

Welcome! As you all can see this is my first post with any actual substance to it. Below are some of the images from the camping trip I just got back form with my buddy Scotty Jones. We hiked for 3 days to the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, who are known for their beautiful blue waterfalls. Luckily, the day we were supposed to hike in there was severe flash floods which made the 9 mile hike very pleasant and to top it off turned all the waterfalls a murky brown! Here's a shot of Scott on the day we left, the arrow is where we are coming from and still had miles to go from this point.

Fortunately by the last day the water had started to clear up a little bit and you can kind of see the green in the water.

On our final day we headed to the Paria Wilderness on the border of Utah near Page for what is known as the wave.

Here's Scotty walking through the sandstone spirals of the wave

After putting a major damper on the first leg of the trip, the weather gods decided to give us a bit of a break and gave us a perfect day to view the Wave.

I hope that you enjoyed my first post, we will see if I can keep this thing up to date! Take it easy

First Post

2007-06-14T08:07:00.001-07:00

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