We have been fortunate enough to stay at some of the fanciest hotels in North America in places like Palm Springs, San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles and Vancouver, and have almost always paid less then $100 per night, sometimes much less.  So how do we do it?  Easy, by naming our own price on  Priceline.com

I have to admit, I kind of like the unknown surprise nature of Priceline – and as a photographer, I rarely care what hotel I’m in, as long as it is a decent room in the area I want to photograph.  But there is a lot to using Priceline effectively, here are some things I have learned.

I won’t walk you through the actual steps for bidding – the process is very easy, and there is plenty of help on the Priceline site.  But beware, you are required to enter all your credit card information upfront, and if your bid is accepted, the transaction is final, there is no backing out because you don’t like the hotel, price or anything else.  Also, make sure you are using the Name Your Own Price section of the Priceline website – there is more then one way to book a hotel room with Priceline so look closely.  The biggest savings are found by naming your own price bidding.

Because there is no reversing your transaction, I play it safe and stick with the best hotels.  You never know what hotel you are going to receive, so to eliminate the chance of “winning” a dump, I stick with the highest rated hotels.  This means 4 star properties in most areas, or in some places like the Palm Springs area, you want to go with resort properties.

Do your research.  There are two great forums, both organized by city/state where users share the dollar amount, dates and hotel information for recent winning bids.  Again there is no guarantee, but by spending some time on these sites, you can get a feel for what people are paying, and what hotels people are typically winning.  Both BiddingForTravel.com and  BetterBidding.com have valuable information.  In addition to these resources, I will often check out 4 star hotel prices on Hotwire and other on-line sources like Expedia, or better yet by checking directly with a few hotels.  If you aren’t able to bid and save a fair amount of money as compared to these traditional  sources, there is no point in naming your own price with Priceline.

Now for making your actual bid.  One of the challenging things with Priceline is that you are only allowed one bid per 24 hours.  You can’t re-bid unless you expand the region, or the the star rating of the hotel (lower).  I’m sure this is so that users don’t bog things down with repeated rebids for low-ball amounts – plus, it helps to encourage higher bid amounts.  But, there are a couple of things you can do to work around this restriction.

For one, start your bidding a few days in advance so that you have a few 24 hour periods to work with.  But, there is another way to rebid for free in many circumstances.

One of the most popular methods for getting a free rebid, is to add an area that doesn’t have a 4 star hotel – by adding an additional neighborhood, you are able to bid again, but if there aren’t any 4 star hotels in the new neighborhood, you are effectively getting a free bid at your chosen neighborhood.

Let me give an example.  We recently traveled to Vancouver, so I entered our chosen dates and the town of Vancouver into Priceline.  Next Priceline displays 8 different neighborhoods or areas within the Vancouver region.  We wanted to stay in downtown, and a click in the box next to downtown shows the entire range of star levels available.  Next, one by one I check the other areas like Coquitlam – Burnaby.  In Coquitlam – Burnaby, I see there aren’t any 4 star hotels available ( see image below).  Now I know I can make one bid just for downtown, and if it isn’t successful, I can add Coquitlam – Brunaby to my request and bid again knowing my winning bid will still be located in my chosen neighborhood of  Downtown.  In fact for Vancouver, I see I can get 5 free re-bids by adding the areas of City Hall – Downtown South, Coquitlam – Burnaby, Langley, North Vancouver, and Surrey – Pitt Meadows.  I don’t know where any of those areas are, but it doesn’t matter because they don’t have 4 star hotels.  If you want to be downtown, be sure you don’t add the Airport region, as it does have 4 star hotels.  Always double check this information, as it can always change – don’t rely on my example, or your recent history because a higher class hotel can be added by Priceline at anytime.

Notice how the 4 star choice is grayed out for the Coquitlam - Burnaby choice.

Now Vancouver has an exceptional number of free rebid areas, small towns might not have any, but it seem like  most places I have visited have at least one or two.  I should add, I won the Marriott Renaissance Harbourside for $75 on my first attempt – given I had 5 free re-bids, I hate to win on my first attempt because I probably went too high – but for that hotel and that price, how can you go wrong!

Priceline is most effective for travel at non-peak times.  We have had much better success in the Palm Springs area during mid-week as this is a popular weekend getaway.  Likewise, we had more success for downtown San Diego (Omni pictured above) on the weekend when the hotels weren’t full of top paying business travelers.  Now that might be different if it was a home weekend for the Padres.

What about Hotwire?  With Hotwire the price and the class of hotel is set, but you still don’t know what hotel you are actually reserving.  I have found Hotwire’s prices are often 30% or more higher then what I can get with Priceline, so I haven’t used them.  For example Hotwire wanted $115 for a 4 star hotel for the same period we received the $75 Priceline hotel for our recent Vancouver trip  The one advantage to Hotwire is that they list the amenities for the selected hotel – things like pools, workout facility, airport shuttle etc.  So if something like that is important to you, it might be worth paying more.  Be sure you know that Hotwire price – there is no reason to over bid their rate.

Are you treated like a second class guest?  Only once did we feel like we were intentionally given the worst room in the place at a resort in Palm Springs.  One thing I like about 4 star or better properties is that there usually isn’t a bad room.  On a couple of occasions we were upgraded to a better view room for free – this also happened at a Palm Springs resort, and on a couple of other occasions, we asked, and were able to upgrade to a view room for a minimal price.  For example, for photography purposes, I wanted a top floor, ocean view room during our recent travels to both Vancouver and Victoria and was able to upgrade for around $30 more at the time of check in.  Keep in mind though, there are no guarantees.

Why do hotels use Priceline?  Priceline allows them to fill empty rooms without alienating their current guests and undermining the perception of the hotel with a bunch of discounting to their current posted rack rates.  It is really a win win!

So, next time you need a nice hotel and want to save some money, try naming your own price with Priceline.com a try – it is fun.

Downtown San Diego, California.

Here is another photo from my aerial shoot.  The Aircraft Carrier in the foreground in the U.S.S. Midway.  The U.S.S. Midway is no longer active, it is actually a museum parked near downtown.

This is looking down on the roller coaster in Mission Beach, in the mid ground is Mission Bay, and further out is downtown San Diego, California.

Last week I got a phone call from fellow photographer Phil Colla offering to split the cost of a helicopter charter flight over San Diego.  I jumped at the opportunity!  I love flying and photographing from a helicopter; you can pretty much go anywhere you want, and most importantly, you can do so with the doors removed.  This is really important, as you often need to use a polarizer to cut the haze, and polarizers add funky rainbows for some reason when you use them through Plexiglas.  Not to mention, shooting through Plexiglas is a great way to end up with soft photos, so doors removed is the only way to go.

Well thanks to the Santa Ana off-shore winds, we had wonderful clear conditions – I ended up with a lot of images of the area to add to our existing coverage of San Diego photos.

Down power lines in Julian, California.

I’m not a lineman or electrician, heck, I can struggle with on / off switches –  but I don’t think this meets code. 

There are few places in the U.S. that have avoided winter storms this past week, but I don’t know if anyplace looked more unique then the upper Mojave desert.  I was there this weekend and there is still a good two feet of snow on the ground!  One person told me they received more snow last week, then they have in the last 18 years combined.

That much snow on the jumbo rocks and Joshua Trees was absolutely beautiful.  I snuck away from family activities Saturday evening for some sunset photography.  I had hoped to come away with a photo for today, but ended up getting my 4 wheel drive truck so buried in the snow that it took me a hour and a half just to dig it out!  By the time I was out, it was dark, and I was just happy to be driving. 

In the future when I drive down that narrow dusty dirt road in the heat of the desert, it will be hard to imagine anyone could ever get stuck in snow!

Julian California

We made it up to Julian, California yesterday.  It sure looked great with all the fresh snow.  There was a good foot or more of fresh, wet snow still on the ground.

Julian is a cool little historic gold mining town that has a lot of character and charm.  It seems to be a popular choice for magazines doing stories like “Best Places to Live in the U.S.” or “Best Small Towns in America”  Stories like that are a great way to ruin a good thing, but besides too much traffic, it is still a neat little place.  O yeah, it is also famous for it’s apple pies – and they are good!

We had trouble getting up to Julian from Borrego as Highway 78 is still closed.  It is closed because there are so many fallen trees in the road – even in Julian, there were broken trees and branches all over, and unfortunately, most of them were off the beautiful oaks. 

What I also found interesting; the desert side of the mountains received far more snow then the ocean side – some of the deepest snow was in areas that I think of as usually fairly dry like along route S2 and in Ranchita.  Places on the west side like Santa Ysabel didn’t have any snow.

Julian California

This photo was from our trip to San Diego a little over a year ago.

Magazines and books often select more then one photo to mock up for cover consideration.  We had been on a bit of a losing streak lately missing out on what could have been exciting covers for National Geographic Adventure and Via Magazine.  Maybe now our luck is changing!

San Diego wildflowers.

This is another colorful burn area in San Diego County.  The purple flowers you can see along with the California Poppies is Parry phacelia.  Parry phacelia if a fire follower.  

California Poppies.

O my gosh, these hills are amazing!  These incredible hills are a result of the San Diego wildfires this past fall.  The burnt hills around San Diego are very colorful right now, and will probably get better in the days and weeks to come.  I was fortunate enough to visit the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve in 2003 which was a peak year – frankly, these are better, partly because of the shear numbers of poppies, but in addition, these hills are much more photogenic full of rocks and other cool subject matter.

I have two people who I owe a big thanks.  First is Phillip Colla who tipped me off about this wonderful location.  Phil is an outstanding San Diego based photographer, and I really appreciate the tip!  Phil’s website is full of wonderful photos.

The second is Wayne Armstrong.  Wayne is a retired botany professor from a nearby college who was also enjoying this colorful display and offered to identify any flowers I had questions about.  Wayne was very informative, and it sure beat trying to look these up in a book!  If you want to learn more about wildflowers, take a look at Wayne’s extremely in depth website.

The extreme depth of field was the result of using a Canon tilt / shift lens.

The Borrego photo I posted a couple of days ago was the second best sunrise from our recent trip- this morning in San Diego was definitely the best!

The most dramatic portion of the sunrise was to the right of this scene, and at the time I was disappointed I couldn’t position the dramatic sunrise behind the city.  In hindsight, I think it worked out just fine.  The sunrise light from outside of the scene bathed the buildings in a beautiful warm glowing light. 

Here is a much larger version with the ends cropped of the San Diego Skyline.  This panoramic was created with 5 seperate images combined later.

This dark, gloomy photo of the Imperial Beach Pier kind of summed up my mood when I realized I some how lost the extended keywords to about 400 images!  Key-wording is about the only aspect of being a photographer that I don’t really like.  I now discovered something worse; re-key-wording the same images!  LOL.  O well. 

Giant Panda at the San Diego Zoo.  I’m a web cam junkie, and this morning I have been watching one of the Pandas on the Panda Cam at the San Diego Zoo, while it feeds and plays in its enclosure.  There is much more activity taking place this morning then when we visited, this is probably true for most animals at the Zoo.  It would really be fun to be able to visit near sunrise one day – too bad then don’t open it early, even if it was just one day a week.  What they should do is open early one morning a week, or even one morning a month and make it for members only.  This would be a great membership benefit. 

We made the long drive from San Diego to Tucson, and have rented a couple days of time at a wildlife blind in Southern Arizona.  We will be there for Tuesday through Thursday.  I’m really looking forward to this opportunity – if we have internet while there, I will post updates on this experience. 

We then plan on spending the three day weekend in the Phoenix area where I’m hoping the traffic won’t be nearly as bad as it is during the work week – at least during the mornings.

This is a Peacock at the San Diego Zoo.  And I thought the Wood Duck were colorful!  The San Diego Zoo is sure an amazing place.  It has come a long ways since I last visited in the late 80’s, and it was amazing back then.  Not just the animals, but the landscaping, cleanilness – the whole operation is very well run and a treat to visit.

A visitor and gorilla share a brief glance at the San Diego Zoo.

The Pier at Imperial Beach, California.  I had all but given up on sunset when this bit of color appeared just before dark and saved the evening. 

This is the San Diego Skyline captured a little before sunrise this morning, just a few hours ago.  We have made two other very short trips to San Diego in recent years, and are hoping to add to our coverage of San Diego Photos on this trip.

Enjoying the sunset in Chula Vista, California. This was the perfect end to a beautiful day on Monday.  In fact, Monday was a record high for Chula Vista - 87 degrees!  Today was cooler, but it still felt nice compared to Alaska. 

Having spent most my life in Alaska, a place without Raccoons, I must admit I had never seen this common mammal.  I was very pleasantly surprised and excited to find a number of them at Santee Lakes.  They usually hung out on the different islands.  This one was high up in a palm tree in a spot I had noticed a fair amount of bird activity earlier in the week, I think he may be raiding a nest. 

While in Borrego I had another first time mammal sighting when I spotted my first Kit Fox.  It was in the dark early one morning on my way to shoot sunrise.  I saw another one in the exact same spot, while I was returning to camp after sunset.  I thought I might be on to something, and the next day spent the better part of a morning and evening hiking around the area, but was unable to spot these elusive animals, or even a den.  I did find a couple of coyotes.  I even saw a coyote at Santee Lakes.

We have moved down to the coast in Chula Vista and will be spending the week in this area doing mostly travel type photography.

Yep, while camping at Santee Lakes, we even took the time to rent a paddle boat.  Yeah, we’re dorks, but they were fun.  As you can see we kept the life vests in a very safe place – couldn’t have them getting wet!

I did find time to photograph other birds at Santee Lakes beside the Wood Ducks, including this Great Egret.  Santee Lakes was a great spot for birds.  I had spent a fair amount of time in Borrego trying to get close to a Great Egret, and Double-crested Cormorants with limited success.  These birds, and many others were far more approachable at Santee. 

The huge Great Egret is a beautiful, graceful bird that often stood on the shoreline hunting.  I liked the colorful tree where this one was perched.  There were also a large number of similar looking, but much smaller Snowy Egrets.

I have been trying to capture photos of these colorful guys in colorful reflections – I love bright colors, but this might be color overload! 

This was shot right at the last light of day yesterday.  You might think the water is orange from a sunset sky.  Actually, the warm sunlight was illuminating the bark on the palm trees lining the shoreline of a nearby island.  I got down low, close to the water, to increase the area of the reflected glow on the water created from these warmly illuminated palm trees.  I then waited for a wood duck to swim through the colorful water.  I needed to use flash to light the duck as he was actually in the shade.