April fires bring May flowers?

In southern California its always fire season and today was no exception, even though it was in the high sixty's today and it is April. I received a call at around 2pm from one of my editors about a blaze going on not more than three miles from my house. Like the old saying goes " If it were a snake it would have bit me"

As I got in my car I was amazed at the column of smoke and I instantly knew this was going to be a good sized fire. I have already been on three or four small brush fires this year, most of them had been put out by the time I arrived. This fire on the other hand was a different story, as I approached I had to go through a CHP road block and then as I got closer to the fire I realized I couldn't see a thing. The wind had shifted and I was enveloped in ash and smoke, not the best thing when you are still trying to find your bearings.

My one big goal in shooting this fire was to get images of large flames with the fire personal in the frame. I have been on many brush fires and never really been satisfied that my images convayed the intensity of the situation. This time however I really fell I got the images I have been searching for, there were a large number of big flare ups and they were at a distance I felt safe with.

The other good thing about this fire is that no one was injured and no structures were damaged. Its just like one of the residents of a house in the path of the flames said to me" Well if my house makes it through I wont have to worry about clearing all the brush around here this year" and good thing for him his house is fine and he has one less piece of yard work to do.

Candle light vigil

Last night I covered a candle light vigil for family and friends of victims of violent crime. It was all part of National crime victims rights week and it was attended by many local politicians, and law makers.

For me it was a very somber and uncomfortable scene to be at, I recognized many of the faces from crimes scenes I have been on and really didn't fell like it was fair for me to, yet again be invading these poor peoples lives at an already difficult moment.

Photographing for newspapers always has its ups and downs, you get to go to a lot of really cool places and meet some of the most amazing people in on earth. However there is a flip side to that, you have to make photographs of people during hard times, and for the most part readers don't really think about the fact that the photo on the front page of the local section had to be made by someone, someone had to be there and take from the person in the image.

At the heart of Photojournalism is that defining moment, the second that someone reacts to there surroundings, whether it be war, a natural disaster, or the loss of a loved one. That moment is the purpose for why I and every other Photojournalist pick up a camera everyday and try and share our worlds with the rest of the planet.

Easter Service

As a photojournalist I try and keep an open mind and stay as objective as possible, but when I am near fervent believers (especially of the Christian kind) I feel somehow uneasy. Like they have tapped into some kind of spiritual oasis that only the "saved" can pull from and by not knowing a way to tap into it, I am somehow an interloper sent to ruin and mock their celebrations. When in actuality I really respect them for having something they can believe in so strongly without having any real physical evidence of it.

That being said, I got to photograph an Easter play at a local church today, I was immediately hit with the fact that a large portion of the congregation had tattoos, they were in t-shirts, and shorts, and there was a lingering smell of cigarette smoke. Also it became apparent to me that their were many parishioners who were trying to restart their lives after problems with the law.

This was not the normal group of people I have come to know as church goers, they were really there to get closer to god and help themselves get to a better place. It was refreshing to say the least. As far as the photography, the church was poorly lit and I ended up having to use a flash, something I don't love to do. However considering how bad the lighting really was I felt I came away with some fairly good images and a good not uneasy feeling about the people I was sent to photograph.

The Hunt

Yesterday morning I had an assignment to cover an Easter egg hunt at a local park. This assignment seemed pretty straight forward and simple however its been a year or two since I shot an Easter egg hunt and I had forgotten how much energy those little hunters have.

Another local photographer Paul Gallaher was also there, and I think we both realized at about the same time that the plans we had formulated to photograph this event were not going to work. So after the first group of kiddos (4-year-olds) laid waste the close to football sized field of eggs in a matter of seconds, we both regrouped and made new plans on how to get the images we wanted.

So after about two or three age groups of kids I finally had the rhythm of the madness down and got away with some pretty nice images. Also Paul and I had a little fun snapping some photos of each other trying to make our pictures.



Here is Paul laying in wait and probably hopping not to get trampled.

What Next?

In the past few weeks I have been covering more and more stories about the economy, none of them good, some of them hopeful. But all generally the same, good hard working people who have either lost their jobs or are facing layoffs. Last night I covered a foreclosure seminar, which was a good thing, in a way because it was aimed at helping those who might lose their homes get help and possible keep them. Today I covered custodians at a local school, these people do some of the hardest work with some of the worst hours possible and yet they are all very happy with their jobs. However do to the fact that they are employed by the school district, they like so many others can't be sure how long they'll get to keep those long hard hours.

The newspaper industry, of which I get most of my work from is no better off, last week a local paper laid off a good number of its editorial staff including some friends. Also last week the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped printing a paper and moved to a web only edition. And just yesterday the San Diego Union Tribune sold to a private equity firm from L.A. for an unnamed price, no one knows what this will mean for the UT but my thoughts go out to all of those who are on the edge of their seats waiting to see what happens next.

I can't say exactly what got us into this current finical crisis we find ourselves in. Was it greed? probably! Was it ignorance on the part of "Joe public"? Maybe! Was it a mix of the two? definitely! The bottom line is we are here now and there is no one great answer to fix the problem. I just hope that things start turning around soon before they get any worse.

Why do I hate Car Shows?

Last night and today was spent photographing the Temecula Rod Run, a really great event that is a lot of fun to be at. However this is the 8th time I have shot this event and its getting harder every year to come up with a new way to photograph the same cars and people.

I hate photographing at car shows to begin with do to the fact that they are always held in open areas during the brightest part of the day, with a lot of distracting and hot backgrounds. The cars themselves add a lot of color but often have a lot of chrome and are really reflective so they tend to make unpleasing photos. Also the people are there to look at the cars and really don't seem to care if they walk in front of my lens. I spent around 20 minutes by a car waiting for someone to look in the window of it and every time someone started to, a group of people would walk right in to my frame.

The bottom line is I like car shows they are really fun to attend, I even like the people at car shows they are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But I really hate photographing at car shows!

Drug House

I have always found the architecture of the old Lake Elsinore Navy academy building really gorgeous. So today when I got an assignment to follow a code enforcement officer while he and a couple police officers did a walk through to try and determine how bad the conditions in the unoccupied property was, I got really excited.

The building was once an Navy academy so it has all kinds of twist, turns, and rooms, and with no power and all the windows boarded up the building was really dark and impossible to see in. Also it has been a beacon for drug addicts and gang members for the past few years. The inside was like a pack of wild animals ransacked it, people have been stealing the wiring from the walls, and just about anything they could pry loose or saw off. The floors were missing section where they had pulled up the boarding to remove the steel pipes from the floor. We even found a soda bottle full of urine that some one had been using as a toilet. It was really an uncomfortable place to be in, you never knew who or what was around the next corner, and all you could do was expect to find a dead body or a strung out junkie waiting to protect his or her home.