O'Sullivan Studios

03/06/2024

March is here, and as usual, I am a few days late with the photo for my March 2024 calendar. Today's destination is Cape Flattery, the northwestern tip of the American frontier.

For the past few nights, I have been camping out in a vehicle, listening to the wind and coyotes howling as if they were auditioning for a horror movie. Small pinecones and tiny branches bounced off the hood of my Jeep, sounding like someone was knocking on my door to get my attention. I needed sleep.

This was my second hike in the rain that day; I was already soaked. Two minutes earlier, I was thinking, "Should I bail? Should I just call it quits and head back to civilization?" But the rain stopped, and as I trudged on, I could see the silhouette of the sun peeking through the clouds. Alone in the woods, I mumbled to myself, "Carolann, walk toward the light," with each step. When the sun finally pierced through the clouds, I forgot for a second that I was weather-beaten and weary. I felt electrified. I snapped a photo.

I thought we all had this path in front of us. Life will give us some good days, it will give us some rain, sometimes lots of rain and a few coyotes, but when that rain clears, what a wonderful feeling. It could almost make one thankful for the bad days.

The second shot is from Cape Flattery; however, I really like the one with the sun. I picked it for March because that's when winter is over. The sun is coming out, and good things are ahead.

11/29/2023

What I take with me on a typical drone shoot.

12/13/2022

06/29/2022

Fjaðrárgljúfur is a canyon in southeast Iceland. To me, it looks like something out of Avatar. When I took this shot, I only wished I had someone standing off in the distance on the highest point, but I didn't have a travel buddy on this trip.

Tag the person you would ask to stand on That High Point in the center to take this photo. 🫡 I choose .0

06/14/2022

It takes an iceberg this size about 3 months to melt away. The really crazy detail is just how far down they go too. I was told that this one goes down into the water about 130 meters or roughly 425 feet.

Lastly, by the water's edge, they have a sign asking people not to swim out to the icebergs and try to stand on them. I feel that if a person thinks that swimming out to one of these things is a good idea, then you deserve to try it. Also, if they are tough enough to survive, then a little sign isn't going to stop them.

05/21/2022

Say good morning to Babar. I don't really know if this elephant has a name; I just remembered the children's book. 

  

05/14/2022

At the Ukuwela Conservancy, you can see the former pineapple farm on the left is slowly and what the land should look like on the right. However, I think the giraffe prefer the wide-open spaces so they can see predators from a long way away and steer clear of drone operators driving around in pickup trucks.

04/13/2022

Did you know that only 4% of the animals on this planet are wild?

04/05/2022

They say that the earth was made from the dust of the universe. We emerged from the earth and evolved into what we are. We arent' separate from the universe; rather, we are the universe or at least pieces of it. This rock is also a piece of the universe.

For a concise moment in time, this rock and I were positioned next to one another, alone, in the middle of the desert. It traveled to its spot, and I traveled across the country to it. At one point in time, two pieces of the universe met, and one piece took a photo of the other.

When I drive long distances on my own, I get thoughts like that stuck in my head. I think they rock.

03/21/2022

On March 2, 1829, congress provided Block Island $5,500 to build a lighthouse on the northwest point of the island. It was built on unstable sand and gravel, so it was swept out to sea a few years later. Other lighthouses were built for the same price and even more, but there was a problem with them too. The current lighthouse is technically the 4th one built in that area. You can see sill the foundations of two of the failed lighthouses.

I'm sure the government was trying to save money by building the most cost-effective structure. But by taking the cheaper road, in the end, they had to build four lighthouses to get one that lasted.

Moral of the story. Sometimes taking the expensive option is the "cheaper" option, and if you're going to spend the time to build a lighthouse, build one with a public bathroom.. OMG, my batter was about to burst when I took that shot.

                                                

03/10/2022

My uncle, Mac, and my aunt Emily were in their 20s when they met, and life up until that point had not been easy for either one of them. Emily lost her father at a young age, and Mac had lost his mother when he was even younger. Mac's father wasn't well, so Mac had to drop out of high school to help support his father.

Growing up, when boys typically came to the door asking for Emily, it was to join their stickball team or play another game on the streets of Brooklyn as she was the only coordinated and athletic O'Sullivan. But when Mac came asking for Emily's hand, my grandmother told him that if he were to marry her daughter, he had to have a degree first. Knowing that Emily was the one for him and didn't want to live without her, he went back to school, put himself through college, and married his Emily after he got his degree.

My father lived with them for a while; my dad loved that time when they would have dinners together, sing around an old organ, and play ping pong well into the night. Both army vets, my father, and Mac had a lot in common. Not only did Mac take over the responsibility of caring for Emily but eventually also my grandmother. Mac also got my father his Job at Marsh and Mclennan, starting his 33-year career in Insurance.

During their 59 years of marriage, they bought their first house together, played countless rounds of golf together, moved to Florida together, and now have 6 wonderful grandkids together. Mac gave everything to his family; he lived for his wife and proved definitively that he genuinely didn't want to live without his "Em."

Mac rejoined his Emily last Tuesday, January 8th, a week after my aunt Emily left this world on February 28th.

I will miss them.

02/14/2022

While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death, others claim that the Christian church decided to place St. Valentine's feast day on the 14th to "Christianize" the pagan fertility festival dedicated to Faunus called "Lupercalia"....

On the 15th of February, members of the Luperci, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf. The priests would sacrifice a goat and a dog, strip the goat's hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets. The priests would gently slap both women and crop fields with the goat hide.

Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

I'm going to guess that the church wasn't thrilled with this tradition because convenience stores used to put out all their Lupercalia decorations immediately after Christmas and this annoyed the priests.

Happy Lupercalia Day!

02/02/2022

𝕯𝖔𝖌 𝖎𝖘 𝖒𝖞 𝖈𝖔-𝖕𝖎𝖑𝖔𝖙
...𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢 𝔡𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔥𝔬𝔭 𝔬𝔫 𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢 𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔤𝔢 𝔠𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝔬𝔲𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔞 𝔡𝔬𝔤 𝔟𝔢𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔢𝔩.

02/01/2022

To deter poachers from killing Rhinos, animal preserves need to cut the horn off a Rhino roughly every two years. They do this because the horn is made of Keratin, the same stuff that your fingernails are made from. Poachers will shoot a Rhino and once it's on the ground, the brutal process of hacking off the horn as fast as they can begins. They don't wait for the rhino to die first, either. 

The three baby Rhinos in the video were orphaned once their mothers were killed for their horns. Many of the skulls that you can see in the video were from Rhinos that were also killed the same way. 

It costs roughly $2500 to dehorn a Rhino, and the process is paid for by donations and or volunteer trips like the ones that Ltakes people on a few times a year. If you're interested in one of Wild Tomorrow Funds trips or just supporting the work they do, check out their website. 

www.wildtomorrowfund.org

                                            

02/01/2022

To deter poachers from killing Rhinos, animal preserves need to cut the horn off a Rhino roughly every two years. They do this because the horn is made of Keratin, the same stuff that your fingernails are made from. Poachers will shoot a Rhino and once it's on the ground, the brutal process of hacking off the horn as fast as they can begins. They don't wait for the rhino to die first, either.

The three baby rhinos in the video were orphaned once their mothers were killed for their horns. Many of the skulls that you can see in the video were from Rhinos that were also killed the same way.

It costs roughly $2500 to dehorn a Rhino, and the process is paid for by donations and or volunteer trips like the ones that takes people on a few times a year. If you're interested in one of Wild Tomorrow Funds trips or just supporting the work they do, check out their website.
https://www.wildtomorrowfund.org/

01/30/2022

Last year, I cut this video but never posted it. I shot this right after I got the iPhone 11. In my opinion, the iphone is now the handiest little camera I’ve ever had. I even call it a camera more than I call it a phone.

on set with

01/24/2022

I remember shooting this image at a time when people were saying, "New York is over," "It's the end of big cities as we know it," "No wants to live in a densely populated city anymore.", "Be prepared; NYC is going to go back to what it was in the '70s."

It reminded me of the days after 9/11 when people said real estate in NYC would collapse because no one wanted to live here anymore. I remember a real estate agent on the news talking about how it was pointless to rebuild the World Trade Center because who would rent office space there after all that has happened.

I remember looking at the city from this vantage point, seeing all the activity, seeing all the lights, freezing my ass off (after all, it was cold), and I thought to myself. The great pandemic of 1918 killed more people in NYC than covid did, and people came back. And then I looked at One World Trade Center and thought, "yeah, I'm not too worried about NYC"

                                  

01/18/2022

So many questions go through my head when I shoot an image like this.

Are these people a couple? Are they going to spend the rest of their lives together? Did they know this spot was here? Are they as mesmerized by the sunset as I am? What do they do? Are they happy? Are they going to look at each other in 50 years and talk about this sunset and wish they were back in this moment?

I know I'll never see these people ever again. And they won't know that I captured this moment.

Will this image inspire someone to create a moment like this for themselves?......with the person they care about? And if they do, will someone secretly snap a photo of it.. an image that they will never know exists.


                                                

01/14/2022

"Hey! Stand over there, I want to get a shot of that with someone in frame."......Is a phrase you might here me say at times.
Most people say, "What?" "No, you do it" ... which uses the same logic as a doctor asking you, "what do you think the problem is." I digress.
But when hiking with at the end of the summer in Yosemite, it's a different experience. When we found a cave, I ask her to get in the shot; she pulled out a lantern, stood in a "cool pose," took her phone out for a bit more lighting, and said, "how about this?"
Turn the tables, and I don't think it would have looked as cool. Unless I was wearing a bear suit... but I left that in the jeep.

01/08/2022

Disco donkeys, otherwise known as Zebra, use their stripes to help confuse predators. When a large number of zebras move together, their stripes make it harder for lions etc.. to pick out individual Zebra to pick off.

I shot these two right at sunset with a Sony 70-200mm with a 2x converter. I am no animal expert, but the one on the left either looks preggers or it's eaten its fair share of grass.

If anyone knows, let me know.

                                           

12/25/2021

Love you mom!

12/20/2021

I just got the new M1 apple mac and wanted to run some performance tests. If it didn't hold up I would have just returned it. After the tests, I decided to eBay my old workstation and laptop.

https://youtu.be/ntjmVDfEd2Q

Cinibench - 0:47 Lightroom Test - 2:10 AE Test: - 2:33 Premiere - 4:02Performance Testing The Apple 16" M1 against my current workstation and laptop. ...

12/13/2021

When I knew I was heading to New Hampshire, I wanted to shoot this railway via drone; one could say that one-track mind. I had been training for this very shot for a while. A scheduling issue almost derailed the shoot, but we re-engineered our plans to get back on track. At first, I thought we missed the train; I was steamed. But as I was chugging my water, I heard it off in the distance. You could say I had tunnel vision as I set up my drone to fly. However, I felt run down because my antenna had snapped off; I used an old coat hanger. Luckily for me, the metal made a great conductor. There really was a light at the end of the tunnel for this shoot. BTW can you guess my crazy intention? 

Shot with a Mavic 2




                                                   

12/01/2021

I bet you will never guess who is going to the most extreme solution to help end the elephant tusk ivory trade.

Elephants use tusks to help dig for water, strip the bark off of trees, defend themselves against predators, and in my opinion, look cool. But the years of poaching have caused elephants to grow up naturally tuskless. However, it's not like they are choosing to do this. So many elephants with tusks were killed off that the very few born without tusks are multiplying. So basically, elephants are trying to do what they can to survive in the long run.

One of the potential, really bad, potential repercussions of this is a limited genetic pool for mating. A small gene pool indicates low genetic diversity, reduced chances of acquiring biological fitness, and increased possibility of extinction; this is already an issue with the Cheeta.

Now I don't think I have any elephant poachers following me; otherwise, I'd say, "cut the s**t," but people can do something by supporting charities like .

11/27/2021

Meet Ghost. Ghost is an anti-poaching not-so-secret weapon utilized by the rangers at Hluhluwe–Imfolozi Park

Call me ignorant, but before I got to South Africa, I thought once a Rhino was on a nature preserve, they were safe. Sort of like when you pull into your driveway after running a stop sign in front of a cop. But as I found out one night, you can still get a ticket for that, and Rhinos are definitely not safe. Poachers have no problem breaking into these preserves and slaughtering Rhino to remove the horn to sell on the black market. 


This is where Ghost comes into play. Ghost is of the park's K-9's trained to hunt down the poachers at night before they can do any damage. The park has over 200,000 acres of land to cover, and the dogs do a great job, but the park can always use more help to train, feed, and care for the dogs. 


does what they can to help support their efforts and every little contribution goes such a long way in South Africa. Would you please check out https://www.wildtomorrowfund.org to see how you can help?