Wayne and Jeannie
April 30th, 2007
4.20
April 20th, 2007
420 is police code for marijuana, but for America it means smoking out. I got to do some coverage of marijuana yesterday for the paper at Herbalcure on Pico and Sawtelle.
Portfolio
April 12th, 2007
January 13, 2007. Though Gerald “Jed” Cook is not a Goshute Indian, he and his daughter Joycelyn Halstead currently live in Ibapah, Utah on their reservation. Jed lives on social security checks and what is left of his possessions: a small house and twenty horses, in addition to acres of land that is barren in the summer and frozen in the winter.
Joycelyn puts more ice into a thermos. She is temporarily living with her father due to her mental breakdowns.
This is the third cup of ice that she has been crunching on in the past hour. She is currently receiving disability checks from the government and takes pills for depression and anxiety. She calls her ice-crunching habit “a nervous twitch.”
Jed talks about his family, especially his great grandparents, who settled in Utah with Joseph Smith, the founding father of the Mormon faith.
Jed plays the accordion. The accordion “has been through alot. I used to play it at parties but lately it has been at funerals. Breaks my heart. Just last week I played at my best friend’s funeral.”
Jed is a Freemason. Though he has Mormon ancestry, he says his poverty is due to the Mormons, who dislike
the Freemasons even though they do good to others and are bonded by fraternity and shared moral beliefs.
Jed makes his way to his horses, followed by three of his five dogs. “The stray dogs just keep on comin’.” He has trouble finding use for his land and his horses because Ibapah does not keep the money it makes. Even though Salt Lake City is a distance 120 miles from Ibapah, most Ibapah residents drive to the city to make money and spend the money there also.
Twenty horses and mules are what Jed has left. He sold all of his cattle last year due to financial hardship. “I took a loan from the Mormons and they ended up taking all of my money,” he said.
The Talking Stick’s barista, Seth Heulser, gets knitting tips from Johnnie Loy. “I knitted a little bit in the past but ever since the Stitch n’ Bitch started to meet here, I’ve picked it up again, and I’ve been knitting every time they come,” he said. Knitting is starting to become a trend again, especially among a younger generation, as evidenced by the gathering of the Stitch n’ Bitch on February 6, 2007 at The Talking Stick Coffee Shop in Santa Monica, California.
The Sasnta Monica Oceannaires’ President, Jerry Walker, holds the phone as Oceannaires members (left to right) Alan Hanson, Harry Stasney, and Tom Laskey serenade a cappella on the phone to a recipient on Feburary 14, 2007 before making their next stop in Santa Monica, California. On Valentine’s Day the Oceannaires received over 50 paid requests from those wishing to express their love on Valentine’s day through song.
A contestant waits in line expectantly on October 22, 2006 as the “Hottest Mom in America” camera crew nears her area. The contest was sponsored by the pharmeceutical company that manufactures Restylane, a cosmetic drug that corrects facial wrinkles and folds. Though auditions began at 9 a.m. at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, California, the first contestant arrived at 4:30 a.m., ready to win the title. The winner of the contest receives a year’s free treatment of Restalyne, an interview with a modeling agency, and $50,000 in the form of a scholarship and cash.
Over 200 students from New Roads High School on January 11, 2007 in Santa Monica, California skipped class and instead marched on Olympic Boulevard in protest of President Bush’s announcement on January 10, 2007 that he will be sending 21,000 additional troops to Iraq.
A boy scrawls in the sand on the morning of December 30, 2006 at a ‘paddle out’ ceremony at Santa Monica Beach in Santa Monica, California in honor of ‘Q-Tip’, a nickname of former Santa Monica resident Martin Schmidt. Schmidt died on December 26, 2006 after jumping from a third-floor window in what police believe was an effort by Schmidt to avoid being arrested for the attempted robbery of a market near his mother’s home.
Ohio State fans (left to right) Johnny Tarpy, Sarah Malatesta and Laura Ortlip are stunned-much like their Buckeyes-as they watch their favorite college football team lose to the national championship game to the underdog Florida Gators at The Shack Restaurant and Bar in Santa Monica, California. Florida handed Ohio State a score of 41-14 on January 8, 2007.
University of Michigan seniors Ellen Bankert and Daniel Mickelson chow down in a shrimp eating contest, sponsored by the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company at a pre-event of the University of Michigan pep ralley held at the Santa Monica Pier on December 31, 2006. Eventually their team took first place in the final competition and won first place overall.
The Santa Monica Rugby club played against Back Bay on Back Bay’s home turf in Newport
Beach on April 7, 2006. Back Bay won the first game 23-16, and the second game ended early due to a neck
injury.
Janelle Ruen gets low at an AVP practice match on April 5, 2007 at California State University, Long Beach in Long Beach, California.
Alejandro Galarza practices on a bag at the La Habra Boxing Gym in La Habra, California on April 4, 2007.
Samuel Miller prepares himself for a sparring match by warming up at the La Habra Gym in La Habra, California on April 4, 2007.
I’m here to tell you the truth
April 11th, 2007
The recent headlines in the world of photojournalism is an issue of ethics. Allan Detrich resigned this past saturday as staff photographer. You can search his name on the internet to get the full details, but basically he resigned because he was “caught” erasing something in his picture. It was a baseball picture and there were a pair of legs hidden behind a banner and he erased it so that all that was left was a fence and grass. He claimed that it was a mistake; he erased the legs for his own files and didn’t for the paper so it was an accident and he sent the wrong file.
As a photojournalist, I usually get two reactions. You either love me or you hate me. I’ve had people offer to give me things (like a bouquet of tulips; after refusing for the tenth time I took it to the office for everyone), and I’ve had people refuse to speak to me even though someone invited me to the event for press coverage. I get emails from people thanking me for everything; one person loved the pictures enough to take the whole supply of newspaper out of the hotel and take it all to New Zealand.
All of this is part of the job and I enjoy interacting with people, but one of the things I would like to be known most is that through pictures, I tell the truth. I have been schooled by professionals who tell me that besides cropping, and a bit of color correction, I am absolutely not allowed to do anything else to the picture. I can’t even tell someone to move. I have to move to catch a different angle, or I have to shoot with whatever is in the frame. I can crop something out, but erasing anything via photoshop is out of the question.
Of course, there are the set up pictures. Food lined up in a question mark on a plate. A portrait where I tell the subject to look my way. But everything else should be what I am seeing through the camera lens.
I don’t even remove objects in my pictures even for personal files. That mistake can be costly. I want my pictures to make a difference. If that means highlighing social ills that need to be fixed or emphasizing a good deed of a person, I want to carry a reputation so that there will be no doubt that I am telling the truth about the current state of society.
Besides, now that I use aperture, I find that I have little use for photoshop anymore in terms of newspaper pictures, all of the cropping and color correction tools are included with Aperture 1.5.
By the way, Aperture 1.5 is great and I love the program. The learning curve is a little steep but once you get it it makes life much easier.
Sportsshooter Academy IV
April 9th, 2007
…was great! Four days of nothing but shooting sports. I got to photograph with over $10,000 worth of equipment with no rental charge courtesy of Canon. I especially like the 300mm, I don’t need a tripod for it. With a 400mm I had to use a monopod because it was so heavy.
During the Academy I had a chance to shoot beach volleyball, boxing, baseball, indoor men’s volleyball, rugby, water polo, and crew. The hardest sports for me to shoot were men’s volleyball (it was so fast) and baseball (spurts of action at erratic times, with a heavy 400mm lens that I had trouble adjusting to). Here are some pics.
‘allo
April 2nd, 2007
I apologize for the lack of posts.
Recently I have been trying to learn Apple’s Aperture program. This is software that Apple developed for photographers to make sorting pictures, printing, filing, etc. easier. It’s supposed to improve my workflow and so far the program is running beautifully. I’ve heard a ton of criticism about Aperture. People have said that it’s expensive and it takes up a lot of memory, but still I’m going to give it a try.
This week I’ll be credentialed up and shooting NCAA sports. Not basketball, but baseball, AVP volleyball and maybe even boxing. Learning Aperture has been challenging and fun, but the real test is whether it will work in realtime, so I’ll report back to you next week and tell you how this program is.
Ever since I started photography I’ve become an Apple fan. I’m not religious about it (yet?) but simply put the apple interface is friendly and fun for users like me who grew up getting scared every time I had to do something complicated on a PC. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why alot of my friends are computer engineers.
Have a great week.