Add this to your Christmas wish list...

A few months back, Alan and I found ourselves shooting to a new beat at the AV Fair. Country music duo The Wheeler Sisters are  fun and talented. Dani and Cristina were born and raised in Lancaster, California, where they first realized their talent and dream. Though they are a new group on the Nashville scene, they are off to a good start; their first EP “This is Gonna Get Ugly” was written by award-winning song writer Jim McCormick. To the excellent song-writing, the sisters bring their unique vocal harmonies and an awful lot of energy!

Want to learn more about the Wheeler Sisters? Check out their site at www.wheelersisters.com. And - don’t forget to "like" them on Facebook!

Roman Candle in the Sky

26mm, 433 second exposure (just over 7 minutes), f/5.0.

One of the small benefits of being located in the Antelope Valley is that we're 130 miles due east of Vandenberg Air Force Base, over on the coast. This gives us a gorgeous viewing spot for any night satellite launches that take place from there, the preferred launch location for craft destined for a polar orbit.

Such was the case with last night's launch of Delta 357, carrying the NASA NPOESS Preperatory Project (NPP) payload, a climate observation science package, plus six small "cubesat" science science research satellites. The standard Delta rocket was augmented by nine strap-on solid rocket boosters, and when I learned of this, I knew it would be bright!

800mm, 1/125 sec, f/8, handheld...not bad for a distance of over 130 miles!

According to the United Launch Alliance website, the ten-minute launch window was to open at 2:47 am, so I I hauled my carcass out of bed at two, grabbed my gear, and headed into the desert. The goal was to find an appropriately photogenic Joshua Tree for the foreground, and though I thought I knew where there were some out on the west side of town, I turned out to be wrong, slapping my forehead for not planning better and going location scouting earlier.

Where I ended up, the western horizon was indistinguishable in its pitch blackness. Then, precisely at 2:48, it was like someone turned a light switch on. A large area of the horizon glowed orange, clearly showing the mountains between me and Vandenberg. It took a few moments before Delta 357 came into view, but when it did, I was amazed at the size of the plume. Those nine boosters packed quite a punch!

(Here's the ULA website for the launch. An if you should be interested in shooting any future launches from Vandenberg - the next is in March - keep you eye on the ULA manifest/schedule.)

Lord of the Flies

Sometimes, wildlife photography deals with the sublime and stunningly beautiful. Other times, well, there's a certain amount of ewww involved. So if you're easily creeped out, maybe this post isn't for you.

The Mono Lake basin has become a symbol for the conservation community and an example of what can go wrong when large metropolitan areas act like bullies and stop at nothing in their greed for resources to feed their growth. Over the years, it's become a draw to photographers because of its incredible views, unique geology and delicate ecosystems. Images usually focus on the iconic tufa formations (right) or expansive vistas (below).

When you actually go there and walk around, you're bound to notice one thing: the flies. Lots and lots and lots of  flies. And they're "special" flies, too. Really. They're pretty cool. They're called "alkali flies", and they live and breed at the shoreline of the lake. At times, they're so thick on the water that they look like a black carpet. If you walk near them, they swarm away from your feet, and land behind you, making it appear that the ground itself is parting at your stride. They don't bite, aren't interested in humans at all, but be careful breathing when you're walking through a cloud of them!

These little creatures spend two thirds of their life, as larvae and pupae, under water. Even as adults, they have the ability to trap air on their bodies so that they walk underwater and still breathe.

The Mono Lake Committee's website about the flies describes their "mind blowing" growth process: "When the adult fly is ready to emerge from the pupa case its head comes apart! The head separates and a small sac inflates and pops the top off the pupa case. The sac then collapses, the fly's head reassembles itself, and the fly emerges from the case to float to the surface where it then begins its adult life cycle."

And maybe what's best about these little guys is that they're great to eat. Okay, no, I don't know that from first hand experience. But the gull that I shot while hiking along the south shore of Mono certainly seemed to be enjoying himself as he walked amongst the black cloud, feasting away.

Once upon a time, the mono basin was inhabited by a Paiute tribe that, in their language, were called the "Kutzadika'a"...which roughly translates to "Fly Eaters". During the summer months when the tribe was hunting and gathering around the shores of Mono Lake, they would gather the fly pupae, which are rich in both fat and protein, dry them, and cook them in stews. Yum!

So much food, so little time!

American Character - Family Photos

Having professed that the purpose of this blog is to explore the stories behind photographs, I'm pulling out some previously unpublished vintage images from the MojaveWest archive that have no recorded story to tell. For whatever reason, these images have become separated from the descendants of their former owners, and  thus any record of who is pictured, or any story about why the photo was taken, has been lost to time. But in that lack of a story, there is a new story, one that we perhaps project upon the anonymous characters shown, a perception of what we imagine it was like to live in their time.

Click on this, or the other photographs in this post, and stare for a few moments

into these faces. There is so much that is revealed. A husband and wife, 

and her parents, for whom life has been hard. Two boys, one who dreams of 

becoming a pilot, one whose shirt and tie seem incongruous with rumpled 

overalls. An itinerant trade hinted at by the lettering on the truck. And a dog, 

perhaps the only aspect of this whole scene that is timeless. 

In this new century, we have become a visual world, and practically everyone now has a camera of some sort, and just about every aspect of life gets shot - including many that probably shouldn't. Superstar photog Joe McNally once wrote, "Face it: every day, there are about 30 million billion digital pictures being taken. How do you make yours stand out?"* That, as I've already written, is the challenge.

But it wasn't always so. Once upon a time, cameras were large, bulky, and the singular realm of the professional. Then came Kodak and the Brownie, and suddenly the ability to record everyday life happening around you became possible to the amateur. The age of the snapshot was born. Dig through a pile of antique photos sometime, and you'll start to see a clear demarkation in time, separating the age of pro-only shooting (hallmarked by tin-types and a little later, by "cabinet photos") of the late 1800s/early 1900s and the snapshots of the 1920s and 1930s.

Pro photographers of that era, more often than not staged their images. Amateurs, on the other hand, captured unrehearsed moments in reality and time. What shines through so many times, though, is a profound sense of the character in the people imaged. Maybe it's just our perception, maybe it was because of the harsher times that they lived through, or maybe it was the honesty of the early snapshots, before people realized they could fool everyone and fake looking good. What ever it was, take a good, long look at these images and you'll start to see something remarkable. It is the character ingrained on their faces, chiseled there by the life they led, by life itself being fundamentally harder than it is today.

The California license plates say 1930. Dad - a milkman? - has
just come home from work, interrupting a game of baseball
played by his young sons. And how about that rumble seat?

As we stare into these windows of the past, though, there is a danger of deception, a fundamental trap of error that our brains fall into as we imagine their world. Like images we shoot today, they allow us to look through the eyes and with the perspective of the one person on the scene who remains unseen, the photographer. Their motives and thoughts in taking the shot might be guessed at from interpreting the outcome, but in reality remain forever veiled. But yet, what we see is not really how they saw it. In our daily life, we see things in - and our fancy digital cameras take images that reflect - the bold, vivid colors of real life. When we stare at a vintage photo, however, it's usually sepia or a best black and white. Look at enough of them and the brain gets tricked into imagining life during that era as somehow colorless, so much so that when we do come across some of the rare, early color images from those days, our mind sort of suffers a disconnect.

An interesting mental effect from this falsely monochromatic view of their world is the thought that somehow what they experienced is somehow less real than what we do. If anything, it was more so. Without our ultra-advanced climate control, summers were hotter, winters were colder. Sanitation and hygiene were different then, and thus were the everyday odors. But none of that comes through in a photo. And we conveniently forget about it, too.

A summer afternoon's visit to Grandma and Grandpa in Dad's new car?

So as you compose and shoot your next family snapshot, what story are you telling, and what story will be read into it 80 years from now by someone who has no clue who you were, but who is staring into your eyes trying to image what it was like to live in your time?

*From Joe McNally's The Hotshoe Diaries, an amazing book which should be required reading for anyone who picks up a speedlight and slaps it on a camera.

Twisting a Golden Panorama

If there's one Northern California iconic landmark that's been over-photographed, it's the Golden Gate Bridge. So last year, when we visited the place once again, I was seriously tempted to just leave the camera in the car. I mean, why even try being creative when every square inch has been shot from every conceivable angle? But there were family shots to take, so along went the camera.

As many times as one has been on the bridge, it never does actually become old. So as we were standing there on the south pier, I just allowed the size and age of the structure to envelop me. The walkway along the side of the bridge actually goes out and around the massive piers, clinging to the side of the steel, high over the water. It was dizzying.

And as I stood there, taking it all in, I started to wonder if there was a way to shoot it and capture it all in one image, or at least one panorama. Now I've shot a lot of panoramas in my time, even back in the days of film where I had to tape a whole bunch of prints together before framing them. Of course, the stitching capabilities of today's Photoshop makes it a lot easier. There have been a number of panoramic images of the bridge shot and offered to tourists...I know, because I saw them in the gift shop before I walked out on the span. But how do you shoot a panorama of an object while you're actually on the object itself? How do you capture the length and the height of an object in a pan?

Then it struck me...I'd fallen into the typical trap of thinking two-dimensionally. Pans are usually shot in a horizontal fashion, with the camera being turned in a horizontal circle about the photographer. But what if I panned the other way, starting with the view at one end, arching up directly overhead, and ending with the view at the other end? So I did. Stitched together, this is how it looked in its raw form:

Taking this, then, and bending it into an arch so that both ends were right-side-up, was a simple task with the warp tool in Photoshop.

It was fun to do...and was the only "keeper" of my images from the bridge that day, and it certainly was different from all the other images offered as posters and postcards, so my primary objective was achieved. And I was reminded to break from the habit of thinking only two-dimensionally. Does the image work for you? Let me know why or why not!

Picture This Dead End

Alan Radecki

Sometimes - maybe more often than not - the opportunity to shoot a unique scene happens totally by accident...or by taking a dead-end road when you think you’re actually going somewhere. It was on of those “doh-” moments. We had just gassed up the car in Salinas, and were heading for Capitola, and Alan thought he knew a) where the highway was and b) that the back road we were on would connect up with it. Watch out for men who aren’t using maps!

As we came around one corner, there was a cool-looking, ramshackle old house...perfect for the kind of photography we like to do sometimes, so of course we had to stop. It turns out that the house is a part of the Monterey County Historical Society's Boronda Adobe museum complex. We’d just started shooting away when we were approached by James Perry, the museum’s Curator as well as one of the docents, who offered to give us a personal tour of the place.

Rebecca Amber

Alan Radecki

The yellow victorian turns out to have been the personal home of the well-known central California architect William H. Weeks. Active in the late 1890s and early 1900s in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay area, Weeks is responsible for having designed hundreds of buildings, many in his signature neoclassical, Greek revival style, including many libraries and schools, throughout California, Nevada and Oregon. In 1898, Weeks built this house for himself and his family, and it is noted for some of the unique architectural features, including the witch’s hat roof over the elliptical porch.

The museum grounds also included a number of vintage tractors and trucks, including one tractor that holds the distinction of having been used in the first strawberry planting in the whole Salinas Valley, a crop which today is one of the area’s most lucrative.

Rebecca Amber

Rebecca Amber

Alan Radecki

The irony is that the central feature of the museum is the Boronda Adobe, the first house built in the area, back in 1842. Though we were given a fascinating personal tour of this place by Perry, neither Alan nor I shot anything of it...it had been fully restored, and thus just didn’t have that “character” that makes for an intriguing image.

The docent asked how we’d found the museum, since it’s a bit out-of-the-way. Alan mentioned that we were just passing by on the road and saw it. She looked puzzled. Why would we even be going down that road, she asked. It doesn’t go anywhere. Just dead ends a little past the museum. Yup, be careful of men who don’t use maps. Until next exposure - remember to be ready to shoot when that dead-end street leads something unexpectedly cool.

Alan Radecki

Rainbow web

Photo lesson of the day: when hiking in a redwood forest, don't forget to look up! I'm at that age when my thinning hair can result in sunburn on the top of my knob after a nice day's hike, so I typically wear a ballcap. Downside of that is that sometimes the cap's bill acts as a blinder...and I forget that the forest that I'm hiking through is three-dimensional, and there's really cool stuff high overhead.

On this particular day, we were climbing up through the woods of Niscene Marks State Park in Aptos, and one of party, Jennifer, did what I hadn't: she looked up, and exclaimed at the sight of a leafless tree filled with spider webs, and one in particular that was shimmering with color. Now, I've shot a lot of webs over the years, and occasionally I've seen it where the strand of web will defract the light a little...but nothing like this one.

Some webs capture bugs, this one had captured a rainbow, and stunningly so. Of all the webs in the tree, this was the only one that glowed like this. The web was about 10 feet over head, so I broke out the 70-200mm, and fired away. There was a slight breeze and the web wafted back and forth, the colors changed, waves of blue, green and red floating across the surface of the web.

Moments later, as the sun marched through the treetops, the light angle had changed enough that the color was gone...in fact a glance up at the tree didn't show any webs. For the rest of the afternoon, I made sure I looked up...saw lots of gorgeous scenery, even a few more webs, but not another single one that had captured a passing rainbow.