Photo Blogging Challenge (May 2015): Spring

Here is is, the end of the month already and P.J.'s monthly challenge is upon us.  This month, the theme is spring.  I will be the first to admit that I didn't use my camera very much this month, nor did I even use the cell phone camera, but I did take enough shots that I think I can come up with five shots that pretty much epitomize springtime.  That being said, here are my entries into this month's challenge.

1.  Fiesta

Every Mother's Day weekend, our church has its annual fiesta.  This fiesta is likely the second or third largest event in the city of Claremont every year, so a lot of people attend and there were good crowds even though there was a large threat of rain in the air most of Friday night when this shot was taken.  For the past couple of years, I've usually set up my camera on a tripod somewhere around here and get some light streak shots.  This year, I walked down to the fiesta, only to turn my camera on and find out I had a dead battery.  I knew it was low, but wasn't aware it was that low and so I was totally unprepared for this circumstance.

However, this year, because I'm now part of the 21st century and I have my own smartphone now, I used the camera in the phone for some shots.  Not quite the same thing, but since I have several shots for the past couple of years with light streaks, this is a little different from my normal shots at this time.  It worked out well, mainly because the sight angles this year for the various rides weren't the greatest in the world and the best angles were right in the middle of high pedestrian traffic, which is not good for a long exposure with a camera on a tripod, so it probably worked out better that I did have a dead battery.  Still, that's just a rookie mistake, one that will not be repeated again.

2.  New hobbies?

For whatever reason, it seems like springtime is the time when new hobbies can be explored, that is unless you have a hobby that involves winter gear.  Most hobbies tend to be warm weather hobbies however and so I've got anew interest, one that might not come to fruition for a couple of years, but there's a large spark of interest here.  

One of many photo projects that I've participated in over the last couple of years is the 100 Strangers project.  I haven't taken a stranger photo in over a year, but when I saw Stephen here piloting a drone over the fiesta, I figured I wanted to know more about the drone, how it worked, etc.  Push came to shove and I walked over and starting talking with him about the drone.  Eventually, Stephen said the magic words, "Would you like to fly it?"

Oh man, that was very cool.  I got to hover, I got it to go straight up over the fiesta and just about the time I was ready to really start watching what the drone was seeing, the app lost contact with it.  Oops.  Fortunately, it didn't just plummet to the ground and Stephen was able to guide it in to a safe landing, but at least I can say that I've now piloted a drone.  Oh, yeah.  I plan on doing that again, sometime I hope in the near future.  Perhaps my children can pool their money together and get their old man a drone for Christmas.  That would be pretty cool.  At least here in California, I wouldn't necessarily have to wait until springtime to try it out.

3.  Walt Disney Family Museum

Springtime usually means the beginning of the traveling season, at least for me.  Early in the season, during my spring break, I went camping in Death Valley, the first time I'd been there in about 20 years.  But I digress, since these photos for this challenge have to be taken in the month of May.

Usually in May, I go visit my older two children over Memorial Day weekend.  This year I traveled up to the Bay Area to visit with my daughter and her fiancé.  My older son drove over from Merced for the weekend and we had a very enjoyable time.  Most of Saturday was spent dealing with little wedding details, mostly finding the right suit for the two dads.  I remember several years ago, when one of my good geocaching friend's daughter got married and he bought a suit for the occasion. If I remember correctly, he hadn't worn a suit in a very long time and probably won't ever after.  My daughter commented that she couldn't really remember ever seeing me in a suit either.  Well, I now own a suit, but once again, I'm digressing a little bit since that story doesn't deal with the photo.

Sunday, we drove up to San Francisco into the Presidio.  Our goal was to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum.  If you are a Disney aficionado, or have next to no knowledge of Walt Disney, you will enjoy yourself at this place.  The entire museum is obviously dedicated to Walt Disney, set up by his daughters and it contains all sorts of memorabilia of the man.  The museum is very interactive and pays attention to all sorts of small details.

At one point we were walking down a hall that had a grand vista view of the Golden Gate Bridge and my daughter commented that she felt that all of a sudden she was in a ride at Disneyland.  Not coincidentally, we turned the corner of the hallway and were in a room that featured everything Disneyland, including a scale model replica of the park.  Having worked at the park for five years in the 80s, this was just fabulous and I could have stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, but there were other things to see.

The photo that I've decided to show here doesn't have anything to do with Disneyland, but with the early pioneering that Disney did with sound cartoons.  This shot shows 348 frame enlargements form the film Steamboat Willie, the first talking cartoon, and the first that featured Mickey Mouse.  The 348 shots represents less than 15 seconds of animation time of the film.  And these were all hand drawn at the time as well, no computers to help them out.  Talk about labor intensive work.  It's no wonder that a feature length film, such as Peter Pan, was only released once every three years or so.

4. Street photography

As most of you know, I enjoy taking street shots of total strangers.  Outside of the Disney Museum, the green between some of the buildings was hosting a massive street fair.  Food booths surrounded all sides of the green and all of us took advantage of the massive amounts of good food.  If any of us went hungry, that was our own fault. 

Springtime in San Francisco is dicey at best.  There's always a good chance that Carl can show up at anytime.  Who's Carl?  Believe it or not, Carl is the fog that shows up in San Francisco.  He even has his own Twitter account.  The day we were at the Presidio, Carl was still off shore, but was threatening to come in at any time.  Still, people came to the street fair prepared for the weather and most everyone was enjoying each other's company, which is why I find this shot so amusing.  All sorts of things are happening all around and this guy was totally absorbed in his phone, probably checking his email or something similar.  Maybe he was checking out the latest tweet from Carl.

5.  Kanka

While we were eating lunch on the green, my daughter told me to turn around and look at this massive Great Dane that was walking around with his owner on the other side of the green.  This dog was the size of a small pony.  After we'd finished eating and they had found a place to park themselves, I walked over and asked if I could take some photos of the dog.  After getting permission, I took several shots before the dog got bored and didn't want to have anything more to do with me.  This shot turned out the best of the bunch. He has a better expression in another shot, but I cut off his ear with some poor composition, so I'm going with this one.

His owner said the dog's name was Kanka, which apparently means best friend in Turkish.  Nothing better than going for a walk with your best friend on a beautiful spring weekend up in the Presidio.

Well, there you have it.  Five shots of spring.  Please stop by P.J.'s post to see his offerings on the theme.  There's also links at the bottom of that page where you can view other blogger's springtime offerings as well.

Photo Blogging Challenge (Sept. 2014): Black and White

This month's challenge by P.J. was to post 5 photographs in black and white.  Originally, I was going to post something to the effect that I didn't have five B&W shots, but then I started looking through some of the shots I took this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised that I have enough to cover this month's challenge with ease.  And so, without further ado, I submit my shots for the B&W photo challenge.

1.  Grow Old with Me
I've done several of these shots in the past, but this one was actually a re-do of one of the originals I posted for this series earlier in the year.  In each shot, I wanted to emphasize my wife's wedding ring and I didn't do that very well in the first shot, so when she sat down at the piano a couple of nights ago, I had my opportunity to get the shot right.  It's still not quite perfect as I would have liked to have seen the ring straight up on her finger, but I'll take this for now.

2.  Man's Best Friend

This is Jack, our dog.  He's been featured on this blog before and will probably be featured again from time to time.  I started to Instagram earlier this year, but it's really so much easier to do with an iPhone as opposed to an iPad.  Watching football, with your dog at your side or in your lap is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  I just love the contented look on his face as I scratched him under his neck.  I'm sure your dog is probably similar in that if you stop, you'll immediately know that you're not supposed to stop yet, because the paw will come out and scratch the closest body part to you and you know the dog is thinking, "Oh c'mon now.  That wasn't enough scratches.  Keep going there food guy."

3.  The Windmill
For those of you who are long term readers, you'll know that I enjoy going out geocaching.  The best way I've been able to describe geocaching is it's an Easter Egg hunt for adults.  People will go out and hide something, get the geographic coordinates for what they hid using their GPS unit and then return and posted them on the geocaching website.  Once they coordinates and cache get posted, then anyone with a GPS unit or smartphone can go out and look for the cache.  Trust me, it's way more difficult using a smartphone.

This windmill is located in San Dimas, one city to the west of where I live.  It's located behind a small little residential park and there's some fruit trees tucked back in there with a couple of trails.  I noticed on a sign there was going to be a pumpkin patch back there starting next month as well.

This photo represents why I got into geocaching in the first place.  I like to hike, but I've never been very familiar with the hiking trails in the local foothills.  When I first stumbled upon geocaching, the nearest geocache was approximately 7 miles away from our house and a half mile hike from the parking lot.  It was located in the Claremont Wilderness Park.  I had no idea that park even existed.  Now, many of my hides are in the Claremont Wilderness Park.

For me, at least, geocaching has allowed me to discover my own back yard.  I've found so many trails that I never would have known were there, were it not for geocaching.  The hobby has kept me reasonably fit, but I still need work in that area.  The last couple of times I've really been up in the foothills was on the mountain bike, so I'm starting to incorporate biking into my geocaching outings as well.  If you haven't already tried it, I would suggest checking it out.  It's a lot better than sitting on your butt all weekend watching sports.  Well, sometimes it is.

4.  The bicyclist
I live in a college town.  The Claremont Colleges (five separate universities, plus a graduate school) are located about a half mile away from where I live and provide ample opportunities for photography, whether it be architecture, statuary, people shots, or combinations of them.

This particular day, I was shooting a variety of things, walking around the campuses.  I started out at the Harvey Mudd campus at a spot that I've photographed many times before.  There is an old fountain tucked away down in a small plaza.  It has some rather large koi swimming around in it and the area always provides some great color shots.

It's rather obvious that I was looking for some kind of angle to get an interesting view of the architecture of these two buildings.  I love the building to the right totally surrounded by a reflecting pool that is only inches deep.  I'd taken several shots and I could hear a bicyclist coming up so I waited until he came into the frame.  I think that little added piece of the guy in the shot made all the difference with this one.

5.  Three college guys
After getting the shot of the bicyclist, I ended up almost in the middle of a conversation involving these three guys.  They were talking to a fourth one about a paper that was due at the end of the week.  When the one guy left, the other three started walking to the east, presumably back to their dorm rooms to either work on their papers, or to watch some football on TV.  My bet is actually on the latter, based upon the laughter I heard from them as they trailed away from me.

I only had a couple of seconds to compose the shot before they'd be too far away.  As it was, this one had to be cropped because I didn't have my telephoto lens on my camera and was relying on my 50mm fixed lens when I took the shot.  I still think it's an interesting shot.  Were I to do it over again, I think I would have approached them to see if I could have gotten a 100 Strangers shot. I haven't taken one of those since early January of this year.

Well, there you have it.  My installment of P.J.'s monthly photo challenge.  Stop by and see some other blogger's interpretations of the same B&W theme.

Prime

My wife's "personal shopper" bought her husband a very nice gift for Christmas this year.  In case you haven't been following along for most of these posts, my wife hates to shop.  With the exception of grocery shopping which she won't cede over to me, I do the shopping.  Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, etc., all become my domain.  It works for us.  

Every Christmas and my birthday, we go through the routine.  She asks me what her personal shopper is going to get her husband for Christmas, or his birthday.  Anyway, you get the drift.  I don't mind, as I don't like surprises and it makes it easier in the long run than having her go out and find something that she's not sure whether I'll like or not.

For years, I've been using the kit lens that came with my Sony Alpha.  It's a 28-200 zoom with a 3.8 to 5.6 ƒ-stop.  For those of you who know lens, you can tell it's not a very fast lens, in other words, it doesn't work very well under low light conditions.  The lens I got is a fixed focal lens of 50mm, with a 1.4 ƒ-stop.  It's fast.

After I came home with it, I put it on my camera and I've been testing it out.  It's going to take some time to get used to, that's for sure.  A couple of times, I've pulled the camera up to my face and immediately attempted to zoom in or out.  Nope, can't do that with this lens.  And it's been awhile since I've had a fixed lens on my camera, probably since I was in high school and I had an old Vivitar SLR with a Pentax screw mount lens.  

Zoom lenses make things easier for the average photographer.  You don't have to really think about composition that much, so you just adjust your lens.  With a fixed prime lens, you have to think about things like this, moving yourself within the environment to get the shot you want.  It's a learning curve, not steep, but I figure I'll end up being a better photographer in the process.

So far, I like the lens.  As noted above, it's fast, not just in low light, but it's also very fast with it's response to focus. I was taking shots of a train traveling by and firing off shots as fast as I could.  With the old lens, about 1 in three would be blurry and out of focus because the lens wouldn't respond.  None of the shots I took this week were blurry.

The lens is primarily used as a portrait type of lens.  I haven't used it for that yet unless you count a shot I took of our dog Jack today.  With just some side lighting from a couple of lamps I was able to get a good shot of him as he lay on the couch.  I'll not bore you with the technical stuff, but at least know I shot in ISO 100 with the camera set at ƒ1.4, the widest the lens would be to let the maximum amount of light into the camera.  Very little grain and a nice looking shot over all.

Maybe this will pave the way for me to get more stranger shots.  I've been avoiding those over the past couple of months mainly because I haven't been really pleased with the results I've been getting with my old lens.  Well, I don't have any excuses now.  Wish me luck.

Photo Blogging Challenge (November 2013): People

It's that time of the month again when P.J.'s monthly blogging challenge comes around.  This month's challenge was people.  The hardest problem I had with this theme was narrowing it down to just 5 photos.  Here's my take on the theme for this month.

1.  Grocery Shopping
As most of you know, I enjoy street photography.  That doesn't mean it comes easy to me.  It just means that I enjoy it and when I come across a good opportunity, I'll take it.  Street photography is easier when the area is busy.  The likelihood of a bad encounter lowers, I think when there's more people around, but that doesn't mean it's not with some risks.  I've never had anyone give me the evil eye, but then again, most of the time, I usually shoot from behind or the side.  Here's one I took that I included in another blog entry a couple of days ago.  I was walking from our auto mechanic's after dropping a car off to be serviced when I saw this guy riding his bicycle.  It was clear that he was coming from the grocery store based upon the several items in his basket.  Just something about him made me want to take his photo. It was a quick decision and this was one of only two shots I got of him.

2.  Shoes
At my school, I run a photo club.  We have weekly meetings where I will discuss a particular photographic technique, show them examples of what I'm trying to get across to them and then take them out on a photo walk on campus where they can practice the technique.  As of this moment I have upwards of 35 students in the club, so they are a handful at times, but it's also enjoyable to watch them experiment.  I don't have any set requirements on the type of gear they can use, so many of them are using tablets or their phones as their main camera.  In my opinion, that's fine.  The purpose of the club is to get them comfortable using their equipment, not limit it to just those who have full-fledged DSLR cameras.  While out on a photo walk a couple of weeks ago, I noticed several kids standing in a group.  Obviously, the variety of styles of their shoes is what struck me and I set this shot up.  Back in the day, we had white Converses and Black Converses, either high top or low top with white shoelaces, and that was it.  I like the new colors.

3.  Family
Since this post comes one day after Thanksgiving, this entry wouldn't be complete without a photo of some members of my family.  Veteran's Day weekend, I drove up to the Bay Area to visit with my daughter.  My older son came along as well.  I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that my daughter is a Northern California resident from now on.  She has a job teaching fourth grade in Milpitas, California and I don't see her jumping ship to find a job closer to home down here.  My son graduated this past June from college and has been looking for work over most of the summer.  He has found employment just this week with a firm located in Whittier, CA, close to home, but still a bit of a commute.  If this pans out into a long term type of employment, I can see where sometime in the future he'll move out into his own place, probably closer to his employment.  My youngest son is soon to be attending college and getting his life choices in order.  The nest is slowly emptying out.  I took this photo of the two older ones while we were walking toward an amazing sandwich shop in Santa Clara.  The visit up there that weekend was all too short, but she will be coming down here for Christmas, so I'll see her again shortly.

4.  Cool
As noted above, I enjoy street photography.  I kind of wish I'd actually stopped and talked with this guy as I really liked his style and I think he would have made a nice addition to my 100 Stranger project.  It seems like hats of this type are coming back into style again after an almost 50 hiatus away from men wearing stylish hats in public.  President John F. Kennedy is supposedly to blame for the decline in men wearing hats as it was reported that he didn't like wearing hats.  It appears as if that's just an urban legend.  However, as I read that article, I think he looks very odd wearing that top hat.  Although those photos show he wore a hat, most photos of the President show him without a hat.  The hat was just in decline for some time and it's easy to blame a young man with immense power for its demise.  President Eisenhower, Kennedy's predecessor very rarely wore hats during his administration.   Either way, it's kind of nice to see hats making a comeback.  Where it used to be difficult to find a hat outside of specialty millinery stores, now it's common to find them in everyday stores such as Target.  I found this guy soaking up some rays in front of a restaurant earlier this week.  I later saw him after he'd taken off his jacket.  He didn't look as cool then.  The combination of hat and jacket made the shot.

5.  Farmer's Market
I drove into Pasadena on Tuesday to do some geocaching and to also go on a photo walk with a friend of mine.  We walked around Pasadena's City Hall and several other places.  Around the corner from her house was this small farmer's market lined up on the sidewalk.  It wasn't a very large farmer's market, but it did have a lot of photo ops and we spent close to a half an hour then taking shots.  I'd taken a shot similar to this one looking over some onions and potatoes, but it was all an endless line of browns leading off into the distance, so after walking down the entire length of the market, we walked back and I spotted this shot that had a little more color in it.

And that pretty much wraps up another month of the photo blogging challenge.  Once again, here's a link to P.J.'s page where, if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see a list of all the other bloggers who are participating in this month's challenge.  Check them out as there's a lot of really nice shots in there.

New photo challenges

For those of you that didn't see my post on Facebook, I just completed my 30th year of teaching, 29 at the same school.  It's getting to the point that I've been around so long that I've been teaching longer at my school than three of the other teachers have been alive.  It's just something that I've noticed that I have many more years behind me in this profession than I do in front of me.

I'm in the first week of summer vacation and I've accomplished a whole heck of a lot of nothing so far.  Well, not really, it just seems like it.  Friday, the first day was pretty much spent sleeping.  The recharge on my batteries was something that I really needed.  For the most part, with a couple of errands, mowing the lawn and other "honeydoos" that I've accomplished, I'd say this summer is a smashing success right now.

I haven't picked up my camera much so far, but I know that will change.  Near the end of last month, I ended my 365 Project.  For the first two years, I made sure I went out every day and took at least a couple of shots with my camera.  I used the best one of the bunch to post at 365 and sometimes posted others in my reserve album.  The third year, I used the reserve album as my main album, but  I decided that I wasn't going to be so uptight about it this year.  I wanted to post great photos every day, not just average stuff I'd taken on a particular day, so I resorted to filler shots when I either didn't pick up my camera, or didn't like what I'd taken so far.

Eventually, there came a point where I decided that the process behind 365 was done in my mind and I ended the project.  This doesn't mean that I've stopped taking photos.  On the contrary, I'm just posting them in a different format on Flicker now.

I'm involved in several different projects over at Flicker.  One project is a 52 week challenge.  Take and post a photo each week based upon a theme.  The tomato shot above is this week's entry into the "Smartphonography" challenge for this week.  Not having a smartphone, I got explore my iPad a little bit and use some of the camera settings on it.

I'll continue to work on my 100 Strangers Project.  With 37 stranger shots taken in 10 months I've been averaging 3.7 strangers per month.  When I first started, I figured I'd have that project done in less than a year.  Well, it just goes to show you that taken shots of strangers is a much more difficult task to undertake than I realized at the time.

I'm also involved in a monthly blogger photo challenge.  Last month's challenge was a night time challenge.  The month before was all about transportation.  This month, the theme is Bridges, so expect to see some bridges near the end of the month.  And, as always, there will be my weekly entry for the Sharpshooters International Photography Club.  As you can see, I'm still quite busy, photographically.

I've been going through some of my archived shots and dealing with them.  I've already looked at several PhotoShop tutorials on things that I want to try.  If you click on the Flicker link above or here, you'll be taken to my photostream.  Feel free to add me as a contact so you can follow along there.  

Fiesta

Our church has its annual fiesta every year over Mother's Day weekend.  The past couple of years, we've been attending all three days since my wife works one of the booths.  I end up walking around quite a bit taking photos of all of the different things that happen at the fiesta.

One of the things that I've practiced over the last couple of years since starting my 365 project is long exposures.  I've had varying degrees of success catching the different amusement rides with all of there colored lights.  Some that look very interesting don't turn out as well once they've been shot with a long exposure.

I think part of the reason is most of the rides now have long fluorescent light tubes as opposed to individual lights.  If they don't have a constant movement, like this ferris wheel did, the light becomes a very large blob and doesn't look very appealing.  It becomes very experimental while you're trying out different angles for shots.  

Yesterday, during the day, I scouted out spots where I wanted to take shots, then forgot to place my tripod at one of the spots I'd scouted out.   Not much to worry in the long run because the ride I wanted to take a shot of didn't work very well in other shots, so I'm pretty sure it would have turned out quite similar from that spot as well.

Because I've also started the 100 Strangers project, I was looking for possible stranger shots as well as general "Street Photography" type shots to take.  I think I did well with both aspects as I was able to take a photo of one of the concessioners talking with someone.  The tattoos on his arm, spelling out the word Knoxville worked really well in this shot.  He was very successful in plying money out of patrons' hands most of the evening.  The lure of winning a stuffed animal was big in a lot of people's minds and he played right into the lure very easily.

Overall, I was very pleased with many of the shots I took this weekend.  I have several other light trail shots on my Flicker account.  I also met Curtis, one of the concessioners at the fiesta.  He became my 37th stranger yesterday.  If you'd like to check out some of the other night time shots I took this weekend, check out my Night Photography album at Flicker.  I'm hoping for one more nighttime excursion before the end of the month to possible get some star trails as I'm in a blog challenge to take photos with the theme Night for the month of May.  I have a pretty good start on that challenge after this weekend.

Photo Blogging Challenge (April 2013): Transportation

A friend of mine who writes several blogs has put out a photo challenge for bloggers, so I thought I might give this one a whirl.  As usual, I forgot about it until the very last moment, but since it's still April, I'm good to go on this one.  The challenge was to take five photos throughout the month centered around a certain theme.  The theme for this month was Transportation.  Here are my five photos.

1.  Space travel
OK.  This one may be cheating since this isn't the actual space shuttle, but it fits the theme and I'm going to use it.  This is the Ellison Onizuka Challenger Memorial in Little Tokyo near downtown Los Angeles.

As President Ronald Reagan spoke in one of his eulogies following the Challenge disaster back in 1986, "The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.  We will never forgert them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."  

I didn't have enough years of teaching experience at the time to apply for the Teacher in Space program.  If offered a chance today, I'd go in a millisecond.

2.  Walking
These people were just cool.  I took several shots of them and in reality, what I should have done was call out to them to get a better shot, or possibly a strangers photo of one or several of them.  Each of them had their own style, from the two tone yellow and red pants, to the two toned hair style of the guy leading the group.  It's hard to see, but each side of his head, left and right, was a different color.

I've come to appreciate walking much more as I've gotten older.  I've never been a runner, but I enjoy hiking and I get out and walk the neighborhood as much as I can to get some exercise.  It's becoming more of a habit for me the older I get, which I view as a good thing (the habit of walking, not the getting older part).

3.  Traffic
Not much transporting going on here, at least on the westbound side of the freeway.  Traffic was pretty much stopped with only cars getting by on the right shoulder of the freeway when I took this shot.

I had been on my way home when I spotted the smoke from what I assumed was a brush fire.  I calculated where the fire was based upon my position and decided to get off one off ramp beyond my usual off ramp.  That was a big mistake because as soon as I got around a curve in the freeway, traffic stopped dead and I realized the fire wasn't up in the hills, but right in the middle of the freeway.  

I was able to get off at the next exit, but it took upwards of 30 minutes to get there and I didn't think I would have gotten a really good shot, but I parked my car, walked over the bridge overlooking the freeway and just about the time I got there, this flare up happened.  It must have been really burning earlier while I saw in traffic.  Had I gotten off at my normal exit, I think I would have gotten more flames, but I'm pretty satisfied with this shot.  

Los Angeles freeways are our life blood.  They get us where we want to go, but when some kind of "cholesterol" clogs those arteries, things tend to break down, as witnessed here.

4.  Scooter
I spotted this scooter parked in front of a garage door in our neighborhood this week.  It represents a cheaper form of motorized transportation, something that can get you around those kinds of jams depicted in the photo above.  I wouldn't take something like this on the freeway though.  It's way too small.

I rode a Honda Supersport back in the summer of 1983.  I took it many places, gave many friends lifts to different things.  It's amazing how many girls just want to ride a motorcycle.  I always carried a second helmet just "in case."  I took that motorcycle to and from my summer job at Disneyland on city streets most days during that summer.  I made the mistake of taking the freeway late one night home instead of city streets.  Riding next to a tall truck, I suddenly realized how vulnerable I was next to it and realized that if the truck came over, even though I was wearing all of the proper safety equipment, I would be hamburger.  I took a break from riding.  A couple of weeks later, my dad got into an accident, destroyed his knee in the process and neither one of us ever rode a motorcycle again.

5.  Bicycle
When I lived closer to work, I used to ride my bicycle.  It was only a mile and a half ride.  I still have that bicycle, but I haven't ridden it in years and I know it needs an overhaul.  I think one of the things I do during my summer break will be to get the bike safety checked, buy a new helmet and get back into riding.

It's funny, that although I enjoy riding my bike, I prefer walking and hiking for the simple reason that it's hard to take photos when you're riding.  Walking, if you see something, you can stop, compose your shot and fire away.  Riding would be a little more cumbersome to take photos, because the camera would be strapped away, so I'd have to stop, get the gear out, compose the shot and hope the shot I wanted was still there.  So in a way, I think I'm trying to talk myself out of riding a bike.

Now that you've read all of this, here's a link to others who have participated in the challenge for this month.

It goes in waves

Yesterday, I ended up taking two different stranger's portraits.  A month ago, I speculated that a change of scenery and travel was all that I'd really need to break out of a little slump I'd been in as far as taking good stranger's photos.  I figured that once I got up to San Francisco, I'd be able to get a lot of strangers shots.  Well, yes and no.

Doing this project, I realize that you have to pick your moments.  A lot of time, I'm on the move and it doesn't always work really well to just stop, turn around and then approach someone you just saw to take their photo.  I've actually found that it's easier if I've already engaged them in a little conversation before asking them for a photo.  Some people work differently, but for me that seems to work the best.

Saturday, I was walking around the village area in Claremont looking for some interesting people of which to take photos.  I wasn't actually looking for a stranger shot, but more for some street photography and I ended up getting a fairly decent shot.  One of the groups I belong to on Flicker is a weekly challenge group.  The Sunday of each week, a weekly theme is posted and you're supposed to go out and take a photo for that theme.

I've been doing very well each week with the theme for the week.  I just ended up waiting until the last minute to get a street shot for this week.  But the real story is while I was taking that shot, Mike and Kenneth passed me by and then engaged me in a conversation that led to me being part of Mike's senior thesis and both Mike and Kenneth being part of my stranger project.  

Mike, who is pictured at top, was working on his college senior thesis.  He wants to be a Foursquare minister after getting out of college and so some of the questions were rather intriguing.  I gave him my insight on what I believed and he was satisfied with my answers and then I turned the table and asked him to be part of my project as well.  Mike was a little hesitant, but Kenneth was very enthusiastic (probably because he's a photographer as well), and his enthusiasm swept Mike into the project.

We ended up talking with each other for about 15 to 20 minutes and afterward I had two stranger photos to go along with a stranger photo that I'd gotten up in San Francisco.  Earlier, I'd been worried that I might not get another stranger shot and I've gotten three in the past 9 days or so.  The key is perhaps to not go looking for them as they will come to you.

Strangers

On Sunday, I walked around Claremont Village area looking for a new photo opportunity.  I passed a couple of guys who appeared to have just started singing for their supper.  Just as I passed them I bumped into a fellow teacher from my school.  He was in the Village with his mom and brother shopping and I ended up talking with them for about 15 minutes or so.

My friend asked me whether I was out shooting photos for my 365 project and I told him yes, but I wasn't sure what I was going to take yet as nothing had really struck me as photo worthy, although I kept hearing these two guys behind me and I thought I might at least get some street photography shots out of it.

I took my leave of them and continued my walk, getting some still life shots of a couple of interesting things I saw. When you walk in alleys, you sometimes get all sorts of things you wouldn't normally see just walking on the sidewalks.  By the time I worked my way back around to where these two guys were, I had decided that I was going to introduce myself to them and ask them to be part of my 100 Strangers project.

Both were cool with being part of the project, but neither was very talkative since they were really into their music.  The guy playing the guitar was Ken and the guy in the wheelchair was David.  Ken was a little more hesitant about having his photo shot, saying as I was taking a couple of shots that I wouldn't get anything good because "I'm not photogenic."  In a way, he was right as the photo above was the only shot I got where he had his eyes open, but I feel like I caught his personality with the shot.  I really like that he was not looking at me, but at David as if getting ready to lead David into a harmony, or perhaps to get him to play harmonica.

David was singing harmonies with Ken, but also played the harmonica.  He was non-stop talk, but not really talking about much of anything outside of the music.  I listened to them for a little bit, dropped a couple of bucks into the guitar case and moved on.  I think the only thing that I'm really disappointed about with this shot is you can't really see the cigarette smoke.  It's more pronounced in the original photo, but the smoke seems to have been wiped away when I processed it to black & white.  I need to work on this.

So my worries of not getting another stranger photo were for naught.  I wasn't worried, but this definitely was the longest dry spell for me with the 100 Strangers project.  In a couple of weeks, I'll be heading up to the bay area and San Francisco.  Who knows what or who I'll encounter when I'm up there.

Stranger lag

The 100 Strangers Project that I started back in July seems to be at a standstill at this point.  I pointed out about 10 days ago, that it had been awhile since I took a stranger's portrait for the project.  I think I'll attribute it to the weather and my different style of photography this year.

I've been much more relaxed about what I take photos of this year.  I'm not going to stress out about getting a shot each and every day and I've posted filler shots many days this year.  Monday was the first day I picked up my camera in three days.  This would have been out of the question the last couple of years.  This year, it's a different story.

I went back and critiqued some of my 100 Stranger portraits.  To be honest, many of them should be better.  I won't quibble about this one I've posted as I think it's definitely the best of the bunch, but others either shouldn't have seen the light of day or I should have taken better care to get better lighting or better focus or something.  Perhaps I'm not cut out to take portraits?

That's a distinct possibility.  One of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, Ansel Adams, has been an inspiration to me for as long as I can remember.  Shortly after his passing, there was an exhibit, near where I lived, of his 100 prints, the ones he kept in two distinct galleries for exhibition.  Many of the prints we are all familiar with, while others were brand new to me.  There were also several portraits included in this gallery, including one of Georgia O'Keefe.

It is my opinion, that Ansel Adams was not a portrait photographer at all.  I felt his portrait work was lacking and didn't have his signature quality to them that his landscape photos had.  There seemed to be a lack of tonal definition and high contrast that we had come to expect in his photos.  I found it odd at the time, but now, I seem to relate to this experience.

Hopefully, I'll get my stranger mojo back in the near future.  Maybe I just need a change of scenery.  Next month, I'm heading up to visit my daughter during my spring break for her birthday.  We're planning on visiting San Francisco.  I haven't been to San Francisco, outside a quick drive through one summer, since my honeymoon 25 years ago, so I'm very excited about the photo possibilities there.  The thing that I just need to remember, however, is that it just needs to be relaxed.  The opportunities will come for all sorts of photos, including strangers.  I don't need to push them like I did in years past.  I just need to remind myself this.

Flashback Friday

For some reason, I missed this last week.  I'm not going to post two different flashbacks so you just one this week.  This is Nik and Tanya, two people I met on the Santa Cruz wharf over Labor Day weekend.  I had started my 100 Strangers project about a month before that and Nik and Tanya became my 9th stranger(s) that I met and photographed.

I decided to post them as one stranger, as opposed to two because Tanya was reticent about talking about herself, so I only really got Nik's information.  As I was walking along the wharf with my son, I spotted the two of them struggling to take a photo of themselves with the Boardwalk in the background on one of their iPhones.  I offered to help them out, talked with them a little and also took some photos of them using my camera.

Since then, I've photographed and met another 21 strangers, but haven't taken a stranger photo in about 6 weeks or so.  I'm not sure why I haven't, just haven't really been using my camera quite as much and it always seems like I'm with other people when I see a possible stranger shot and I don't want to inconvenience my friends that I'm with.  I'm sure I'll get back into the 100 Strangers project again soon.

Street Photography

This past Saturday, I boarded the Metrolink to ride it into Union Station in Los Angeles.  I was meeting a friend there and our purpose was to find some of the local geocaches there, but the primary objective was to do a photo walk together.  Union Station is located just southeast of Dodger Stadium near downtown and it's in walking distance of several ethnic neighborhoods, so the photo opportunities were almost endless.

We ended up walking first through Olvera St., a Hispanic shopping district just outside the entrance of Union Station.  Unfortunately, most of the shops, at 10:00 in the morning were still boarded up so the place wasn't really hopping yet, we we walked up and then over to Chinatown which was only slightly busier.  

As we walked along the streets, I convinced myself that I was going to push myself to take some street shots today.  Just aim the camera and see what I could take.  Hopefully, I could get some interesting shots.  I think I got more than just some.  One of the things this area of Los Angeles is not lacking and that's homeless or down and out people, not necessarily homeless, but basically hurting for many creature comforts most of us consider commonplace.

Chinatown is a bustling area with many people coming and going and yet you could still see people trying to make do with what little they had.  I saw more than one person trying to catch a short nap on a bench before someone wearing a security badge rousted them and had them move along.

Street photography is very much different than taking a landscape photo.  It's easy to take a photo of a deer in the woods, or a mountain stream.  It's quite another thing to take shots of complete strangers, most going about their daily business.  This is sort of one step down from the 100 Strangers project which I've written about in the past.  With that project, you actually have to go up and ask the person's permission before taking the photo.  With street photography, you just take the shot.  Sometimes they come out OK, and other times they don't look so good.  

Many times I was literally shooting from the hip because I didn't want the person to know I was taking their photo.  There was nothing really clandestine about that, I just saw something that looked interesting and wanted to get the shot.  If the person knows they're being photographed, they will change their expression or possibly their posture.  I wanted a raw image of what I saw.

With street photography, there's somewhat of an ethical question about whether people are being exploited by photographers in general.  I'm sure I will get a variety of responses regarding that issue, but I look at it this way.  If photographers don't take these shots, how are we ever going to know about certain situations?  Do we not show it because people are uncomfortable about certain aspects of what was seen?

When I take photos, I feel like I'm telling a story of my day or hour, depending upon how much time I used my camera that day.  This was my story for most of Saturday. I don't see this every day, but I did see it on Saturday and I'd like to share it with you.

Flashback Friday

As I read through other blogs, I notice that many people, when they can't think of something to write about, or more likely want to give themselves a break from the daily writing, have a day where they just post photos or something else to that effect.  Wordless Wednesday are like that as one example.

Since I don't publish on a regular basis, but want to give my readers something to think about on a regular basis, I may try something similar to this, but this will be Flashback Friday.  What I plan on doing is going into my 365 Project and clicking the flashback button on my main photo for the day.  Anyone who's posted 30 photos will get a flashback link on their photos too.

By clicking on that link, the website will take me to a random photo in one of my three albums.  I'll post that photo here and write a little bit about it, perhaps expand on it from what I wrote over there.

This was Tom.  He was my stranger #11 back in September.  I met him up in Santa Clara, CA while I was saying goodbye to my daughter after a quick visit with her while taking my older son back to his school at Santa Cruz.  It's complicated I know, but it worked.

My daughter and I were having one of those last minute chats before I got into the car to head on home and Tom walked by us and struck up a conversation with us.  He noticed my t-shirt with the University of the Pacific on the front and was very interested in the educational aspect of our conversation.  He was very proud of the fact that he'd been involved in the education system in Santa Clara for 46 years as you can see on his baseball cap.  He had also just been inducted into the Santa Clara Unified School District's Hall of Fame in 2011.

Taking some of these stranger shots are sometimes very difficult.  Getting up the nerve to ask someone if you can take their photo can be intimidating.  I think if it wasn't it wouldn't be so gratifying afterwards.  There's one thing about saying hi, or having a passing conversation, but it's quite a bit different to then take it to the next level and ask if they'll let you take their photograph.  I've had turn downs in the past, but Tom readily said yes.  I can't say this is the best portrait I've taken, but I sent him a 5x7 copy of it.  I've never heard back from him, but I hope he liked it.

That's my first Flashback Friday.

Ray - The Stranger that got away

Back in August of last year, I wrote about the 100 Strangers Project I was embarking upon.  This is a story about a stranger who got away.  Not that he really got away, but he was one of the people I approached who said no to me.

On my walks through the Claremont Village area, I'd see Ray sit on various benches on the sidewalk and converse with people who knew him. Sometimes he'd even converse with people if he didn't know them, he was that kind of guy.  He had long white hair and a long white beard which was one of the things that I noticed about him and why I really wanted him to be part of my 100 Strangers project.

I met Ray in October, I believe, although the exact date eludes me.  I had been walking through the Village looking for some interesting shots and I saw a bird up in the tree next to the bench where Ray was sitting.  After some unsuccessful attempts at getting a good angle on the bird I struck up a conversation with Ray.  We talked about the bird in the tree and some of my photographic endeavors I had been doing at the time.  This brought me around to the 100 Strangers project and I asked him to be part of my project.

He politely declined and I said if he ever changed his mind, I'd love to photograph him.  His response was, "But we wouldn't be strangers anymore."  Every time I'd see him on a bench somewhere in the Village, I'd say hi to him and he say hi back to me.  We had a connection that wouldn't have happened were it not for the 100 Strangers project.

Today, as I was walking around the Village, I noticed a memorial on a bench, the bench that Ray would frequent the most when he was enjoying life in the Village.  I saw this and realized what had happened.  Ray had suffered a heart attack five days before Christmas and had died Christmas Eve.

What I hadn't known before this was Ray's full name.  He was known as Ray Collins, the lead singer of the Mothers of Invention, and the person responsible for bringing Frank Zappa into the group.  Ray was the lead singer for the early Mothers of Invention albums, but parted ways over the direction the band was going in and never really got into music again after leaving the Mothers of Invention in 1968.  Apparently, in his later years he was living out of his van in Claremont, CA. 

The bench has been dedicated by some citizens as "Ray's Bench."  There was a poem attached to the left of the memorial.  It read:

"Come a Day, any day.
Sit on this bench, Ray's Bench.
Speak awhile with him, then leave.
You have not wasted your day,
Just lived it better."

I shall miss seeing Ray on his bench as I walk around the Village.  I'm glad I got to know him, even if it was just for a passing conversation.

100 Strangers

About 2 weeks ago, I came upon a thread on the 365 project where there was an internal link to a Flicker group entitled 100 Strangers.  The premise behind this particular project is to take photos of 100 strangers, but with a difference.  

Many times people go out to take photos on the street, shooting people as they encounter them.  This is called street photography.  Street photography can be quite intimidating, mainly because you feel like you're intruding into another person's space.  Some people don't want their photo taken.  Some people will be rude.  It's probably one of the reasons why I don't participate in street photography that often.

The 100 Strangers project is different.  First, they only allow one upload to the group site per day, so it's going to take awhile to complete.  Second, you have to have their permission to take their photo for this project.  In other words, you have to have a dialogue with the person.  The purpose it to improve the photographer's skills as a photographer, but also as a communicator.

You're supposed to post a little bit about your experience when you talked with the stranger.  Thus far, as of this post, I have posted two stranger photos to my Flicker photostream.  I actually missed an opportunity yesterday to photograph a stranger.  I had been photographing in an alleyway when I encountered another fellow photographer.  We had a very pleasant conversation and it wasn't until after we'd taken our leave of each other that I thought I should have asked to take his photo.  I ended up wandering around the village in town just to see if I could bump into him again, but he'd disappeared.

For some of you, this might seem like it would be too daunting, but it really isn't.  Think about all the times you end up just having a random conversation with strangers.  Many times, it's probably while your waiting in line for something.  I can't even count the number of pleasant conversations I've had with people while I was in line for a ride at Disneyland or other amusement park.  The same goes for those people that I've met on hikes while out on camping trips.

I met a couple from Switzerland in Zion National Park this summer.  Had I known about this project back then, they'd probably be in my photostream too.  My son and I met a nice teaching couple from Canada in Zion and we also met a pair of teachers in Bryce Canyon who were from Southern California.  Talk about a small world.  If I'd known about this project even two months, I'd have a dozen strangers already.  It's OK that I don't, because it's not about how fast your get to 100, but the experiences you have while getting to 100.