Someone's trying to tell me something...

A friend recently sent to me... I wonder if (the jerk :P ) is trying to tell me something?

Photoshop on your iPhone!

Awesome! Now you can edit photos on the go, and it's the same complete version as your laptop/desktop!

Double awesome!!

Less pin-up, more set-up

I’ve never had cable TV before, but at my new place I’ve been watching it a bit and I’ve noticed there are a lot of advertisements with scantily clad women and commercials of models having their picture taken.

My roommate also buys a bunch of tuner magazines and these always have scantily clad women all over them as well.

A quick search for “model shoot” on Google’s video search just now, turned up pages of segments with models having their pictures taken with flashes popping and bad music playing.

Where am I going with this?

You know what I’d like to see, less of the scantily clad women, bad music and random beeps and flashes and more of the behind the scenes set-up from the photographers.

With my rejuvenated interest in lighting, I think it’s be cool to see photographers break down how they do what they do.

I haven’t found to many places where I’ve seen this, but last fall when I brought Michael Grecco to San Jose State University to speak, he showed us a time lapse video of a recent shoot that really helped break it down.



Also from time to time Strobist posts about set-ups and includes some videos from other folks.



And although he doesn’t do it often enough, when Kevin German talks about his newest studio project, it’s a treat.

I think there’s a niche here that could be filled by NPPA, PDN, Stobist, the Discovery Channel, MTV (“I wanna be a fashion photographer,” huh MTV? Wanna sign me on to produce? It is my idea) or some enterprising blogger. Why not create a 3min video segment that walks us through how a shoot was done and actually talks to us about the craft rather than just throwing bad techno over lazy footage.

And that’s my thought of the day.

It's like clock work, Canon announces the 40D

Yeah it's basically an advertisement for Canon, but the 40D has finally been made official, that's awesome! (Time to pick up a 30D on the cheap?)

It brings the Live View from the MarkIII, bumps up the pixels to 10 million, brings over the dust reducing sensor shake from the Rebel XTi and is just something new and cool to play with.

(Who needs a MarkIII anyway? It just makes you a lazy photog and takes a large chunk of your bank account.)

Take a look at the details. (P.S. Told ya Fang, suck it!)

Stop motion photo + Modest Mouse = Multimedia goodness

One of my favorite bands (I'm digging the nautical theme on the new album) gets the flip book treatment for a recent contest that challenged fans to make a music video.



According to the discription it's 4133 poster images created from footage provided by the band. The video was turned into screen grabs and then manipulated into these monochrome images and then printed out at Kinkos. The result is something you'll be watching again the second it's over, and it'll make you wanna try it on your next assignment.

A serendipitous end at the Santa Cruz Sentinel

My time at the Santa Cruz Sentinel has come to an end, last Wednesday was my last. I worked Mondays, and it was kinda weird waking up and not having to drive for an hour over over the hill today. Everything has to come to an end sometime.

For my last day there wasn't much on the roster, but it was a hot day (the first of a mini heat wave actually) and so I went out looking for weather art. When I returned I filed my stories and didn't have much left to do, and seeing as how it was my last day and I had time, I pitched an idea to produce a slideshow.

I find it kind of fitting that my last day at the paper ended on the beach... and with a slideshow.
I wanted to try something different and sorta went nuts with the editing. Take a look, it's sorta my parting valentine for the paper. I had some good times there and I'm gonna miss it... hmm.. that sounds like a list full of reminiscing...

• I'll miss debating the latest news or ethical developments in photojournalism with Shmuel Thaler.
• I'll miss running into Ryan Sholin everyday and having one of us say "did you see this online..." But seriously brah, you can't let you're daughter's first movie be Transformers, that's child abuse :P
• I'll remember that first day of looking though the archive and seeing all the cool stuff in there... and then wasting all that time looking at old movie stuff and press packets for TGIF (if I have to explain it, you're to young... and a loser).
• I'll chuckle when I think of all the office politics and romances that I'm not supposed to know about.
• I'm miss getting to joke around with Anthony L. Solis in the office and then checking out his photos on Flickr.
• I'll remember getting lost twice on the way out to an assignment with Soraya Gutierrez and talking about Rage Against The Machine... not to mention rage in general (I still say it was her fault!)
• I'll wonder how it was that I always (well 99% of the time) ended up driving the reporter to all of our assignments... I'm the out of townee after all.
• I'll remember the day I got the frantic phone call that the front page story fell through and I'd better do a really really good job (no pressure of course the message said) to help fill the gap "or else."
• I'll always wonder why it took me three weeks to finally go to a beach.
• I'll remember the hum of the printing press in the basement as it rumbled to life each night and vibrated the floor in the photo room.
• I'm not gonna miss waiting for a free computer... or saving all my Photoshoped work to a portable hard drive to move over to the only Mac with soundslides (but no Photoshop) only to discover it's behind a door that was supposed to be unlocked.
• I'm not gonna miss waiting 15 minutes for Photo Mechanic to start up for that matter either.
• I never did figure out how to check my work e-mail... I hope there wasn't anything important in there.
• I'll laugh at all the times I ran out on false alarms for spot news... like going out to a fire and instead finding Frisbee golf (which it turns out is normal) and the time a guy brought dynamite to Costco in his car and went inside to ask "Should I have this?"
• I won't miss (or understand) having to move my car every hour in Watsonville.
• I'll remember the day I spent on a story covering bookstores and discover that book stores are pretty cool places.
• It's a sad fact, but no one actually ever drives the speed limit... unless a cop is around, and even then the cop doesn't drive the speed limit either.
• I'll sorta regret not going to New York City for spring break.
• But I'll miss being the point man while two of the three staff shooters were on vacation during spring break.
• The day I was told that I'm getting too many front pages and doing too good of a job (apparently it's possible).
• I'll remember when everyone felt I was being taken advantage of with an unpaid internship and they threw a few bucks my way.
• I'm gonna miss the photo advice from Matt King, less art, more limbs. Got it dude!
• I'm not gonna miss becoming known as the go to guy for pictures of pets and kids during my first month there. Thankfully that changed.
• I'll always remember the day I finally got to go to the beach.
• I won't miss the racist old woman at the bank who asked me where I'm from and wanted to teach me the ways of America. I told her "I can't help it if they let brown people and white people walk on the street together in Canada." (I'm not from Canada.)
• I won't miss the hippies who believe that listening to George Harrison's post India sitar and doing Yoga somehow makes them spiritually enlightened and somehow as I'm an Indian, that makes me their mystic conduit into the mysteries of the East. Seriously guys, we're just different, stop thinking you're somehow better than others in the West just because you want to be different like us.
• The day I returned the light kit at school only to need it on the very next assignment. Lesson learned, take out a loan and buy a light kit.
• I won't miss the time I was blocked in at the fairground with a deadline and couldn't get my car out until way past midnight. (I meet my deadline, don't ask.)
• I won't forget the garlic fries on the Boardwalk or standing in the framework of the Big Dipper and trying to hold the camera as steady as possible while the roller coaster shook the rails and wooden structure almost violently.
• I'll remember the letter from a reader who cried after seeing my pictures.
• I'll miss going down to Watsonville and sharing in all sorts of censored shenanigans... and telling them they were better than the main office and then doing the same when I was back in Santa Cruz.
• And this will be my last time being a part of the week in pictures.
• There's so much I'll remember and look back on... but mostly I'll always remember all the cool people I met while on assignment and all the things I learned about them, from them and about myself.

It's been fun, but every chapter has to come to a close.

The return of the light table

Microsoft came out with this new do-hickey (that's a technical term BTW, don't hurt yourself trying to say it) that's a table top touch screen PC today and that got me thinking (don't worry, it didn't hurt much), why not use them as light tables?



I remember the old days of taking a loop and marking archival sheets when a worthy frame came across my eye. And I remember leaning over a light table for hours sometimes trying to navigate the balancing act of the perfect photo package as one picture was moved here or there and another was slowly creeping in as a candidate.

It was fun and frankly I miss those days. There's something about holding the frame in your hand or freely being able to move images about and shuffle though a stack of slides on a whim.

I think that's why CDs are still around, I know that if I really like an album, I buy the CD (congrats Silversun Pickups, the last CD before you was... I think The Killers, before they blew up thank you) because I like the idea of having the booklet and artwork in my hands.

It's why I subscribe to a paper even though I can just read the same news in my RSS feeds, there's just something about holding that paper in your hands and turning the page, wiping the ink on your pants by accident, pulling apart those pages that are stuck together and the smell of the ink on that paper that I'll use to smack my brother with later. Maybe ePaper will replace this one day, but I'm in no rush.

Microsoft's table has got be excited, and I'm not much of a tech-head when it comes to these things, but it just brings up all sorts of old memories and new ideas. Just imagine Photo Mechanic on a table top device like this. I for one think that would be awesome!

Why not convince some Photo Editors to buy a couple and use them as light tables?

This adaptation for photo use gets me thinking, what else can we adapt?

How about a version of SoundSlides that outputs a video for iPods to download via RSS feeds?

In SoundSlides, it's nice to have the new Ken Burns push and pull and the ability to micro manage transitions, but how about expanding on that and giving us dissolves and pan moves.

This ones crazy, but how about memory cards that come loaded with scripts that behave like certain films stocks/looks: infrared, Holga, chrome, gelatin, etc. It's like buying film in the old days and industry-wide standards on a script will remove the ethical delemias that Photoshop introduces.

Speaking of Photoshop, how about a stripped-down photographer's version that won't cost $800 and doesn't come with all that extra stuff that only gets photographer's like Allan Detrich (read his piece in NewsPhotographer... it's an eye opener) and Brian Walski in trouble.

How about pimping out our cameras with built-in Wi-Fi for transmitting and turning that LCD screen into a touch screen to let us edit from the field and move pics around into various folders right on the stop. Got a great picture of #45 diving for a touchdown? Tag it for a selected folder and by the end if the game you've got your first edit already done.

That's just a few off the top of my head, let me hear some of yours.

Portfolio always in flux

The last couple months I've been living and dying with my portfolio as I look through it over and over, change it up constantly and formulate game plans for future stories.

I've been thinking of what works and what doesn't. What editors will want to see and what they couldn't care less about. What will make me stand out and what will make me just another face in the crowd.

I'm still working on it, but I thought I'd share some of my tips and tricks.

Enter every contest there is
Whether you think you have a great collection of work or not, entering contests is a great way to think like a professional. And quite bluntly, if this is to much work for you, then you will never make it, because in this business no one is going to hand you a job. I have meet some great photographers and I've got a few of these people's personal cell phone numbers to call at any time I choose, but that does not mean that The Mercury News, Michael Grecco, the AP or Golf Digest is going to hire me just because I happen to be a nice guy who they can have a conversation with. I need good solid work to even be considered, and one of the side effects of entering contests is that you start shooting for the contest and

Don't be afraid to ask for help
You should have some like minded people in your circle of friends. Ask them to look at your stuff, listen to your ideas and generally help you sort things out. I often hit up my friends, mentors, teachers and even writers that I've met for advice and feedback on what I'm cooking up. If nothing else it gets me to think of stuff from another angle. Plus sometimes you need someone else to tell you that the picture that you love because it reminds you of a hard shoot or a that you had a great idea, is better forgotten.

Keep a best twelve wall
One thing that I've started doing that I find helps is keeping a wall of my best twelve in my room every month.

This serves three purposes:

1. It forces me to re-examine my best work everyday and recognize where I need to improve.
2. It helps me recognize when I'm shooting similar styles and challenge myself to experiment.
3. I'll always know what my best twelve pictures are at any moment for contests.

Why twelve? Aside from that it looks nice, if I framed those 4x3 squares I could sell them as art, most regional and national contest are limited to two dozen singles.

Devour greatness
When I was younger, while my friends were looking at Nintendo Power and the latest version of an import tuner magazine, I was reading National Geographic at the library and grocery store just for the pictures. I was subscribing to Sports Illustrated mostly for the Leading Off pictures (and the NBA coverage... oh and Rick Reilly's column).

I was studying the great light painters of the Renaissance age. I turn to movies and study cinematography, and once flirted with the idea of pursing film editing. I've turned to music and music videos for editing tricks, storyboarding visual exercises (try closing your eyes and thinking of your video for a song next time you're in a quite place) and innovative camera work (plus, I believe half of multimedia is the audio experience and this helps reinforce the education).

I cruise the net for inspiration and using tools like Popurls, RSS feeds, and del.icio.us I am able to find much to keep me saying, "Damn, I gotta try that!" Plus today I'm having an easier time keeping up thanks be being surrounded by like-minded folks (what, connect with like-minded folks? That sounds like a tip).

Keep a journal
Seriously try it, it works wonders. I've been keeping a sketchbook/idea book/journal since I was 15 and it's done wonders to help me develop my style and projects (and it's also resulted in waking up at 3 a.m. and jotting down many an incoherent note). I like the Moleskine because of it's small size and sturdiness, but the guy inside of me who remembers what it was like growing up poor won't actually let me write in one. Long story short, I have many blank Moleskines and many many more filled in cheepie notebooks.

And now, here's some advice from people who actually know what they're talking about

Jim McNay relayed the advice of Sports Illustrated editor Jimmy Colton and offers up:

"Less is more. Don't feel like you have to send 20 because that's the limit. says Colton." Send as many good, strong, solid, speak-for-themselves pictures that you have....UP TO 20... Remember the portfolio and personal statement you send should be from your heart. They should reveal who you are."

And the folks over at the San Jose Mercury News second that opinion. During a recent visit with Dai Sugano and Richard Koci Hernandez (who says SJSU and SFSU can't be friends?) they loved referencing a story about the intern that got in on the strength of only five pictures (they misread it as five clips for writers as also meaning five clips for photogs). It's uncommon, but the point is, if you edit down to the strongest work and don't leave them anything to nitpick at, you'll be a strong candidate.

My former instructor Dennis Dunleavy gets a little more analytical with the process and focuses on the whole package, not to mention he drops in his trademark three-I's along the way:

"Although we tend to think of a resume in terms of words, we can also extend the idea to images in a portfolio as well. Your portfolio, in fact, is a visual resume. Every image that weakens a portfolio through poor technique, composition or ambiguous content sends a message to the viewer... The words and images that work in the resume or portfolio are those that shows not tell the viewer about your strengths, attributes and qualities. For me, the power of an image is in its ability to communicate universal human meaning with immediacy, intensity and intimacy."

Lastly here is some advice that has deeply resonated with me. Sol Neelman of the Oregonian offered me this in a recent e-mail:

"I think putting together a portfolio is one of the greater challenges out there for a photographer. I'm lucky to have some talented friends help me... Don't ever make excuses about your work when showing it to someone else. Hold your head high and realize that not everyone is going to get or like what you're trying to say. But don't let that stop you. When something strikes a cord of truth with you, embrace it."

Another case of ethics?

I had thought about chiming in on Allan Detrich's firing from the Toledo Blade after it was discovered that he turned in some altered images as the genuine article, but there was nothing I felt I could add to the debate that hadn't already been said.

And besides, you've got Detrich himself speaking about the incident to Jim Merithew of the San Francisco Chronicle. Why do you need to hear from anyone else?

Word spread fast in the photojournalism community and within mere hours of the news I had already been e-mailed by colleagues with articles and his portfolio.

It's a shame, clearly the man was talented, but I guess the temptation to push it just a little bit was to much. (I've got ideas for ways to avoid the temptation, but that's a topic for another post.)

So why am I bringing it up today? Well, today once again I am reminded that in my career field of choosing, the real world doesn't always live up to the ideals we that we learn and debate in academia.

The Press Club of Dallas today announced that their yearly contest had been tampered with and that awards going back to 2005 may have been acts of fraud.

The entries for the 2006 Katie Awards apparently never went before judges, and competitions from 2004 and 2005 also are under investigation, said club President Tom Stewart.

The Press Club has a nearly 50 year history of honoring journalist and photographers in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. It's a shame to see this happen and for the pattern of fraud, lies and deceit to continue.

And after a quick visit to Wikipedia it doesn't look like it's anything new or that it's going to end anytime soon.

Just a few off hand:

-1980's Pulitzer Prize winning story on an 8-year-old heroin addict turned out to be a web by lies spun by Janet Cooke of the Washington Post.

-In 1992 The Oregonian admitted to ignoring allegations of sexual harassment charges against Oregon Republican Sen. Robert Packwood, even keeping hush after knowing of his behavior with one of their female reporters

-2006 hit Wired Magazine hard when freelance writer Philip Chien's articals couldn't be varified and it was discovered that he had even tried to mislead fact checkers with planted e-mails.

-Recently it was revealed that one of Katie Couric's online columns had been plagiarized from a Wall Street Journal article (seriously, like no one reads the WSJ!??) Couric survived the discretion unscathed mostly because she doesn't actually write the online columns, just signs her name to them and pretends they are her words.

And of course we all know about Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Brian Walski and the Lebanon smoke pictures.

I guess as long as jobs are scare and the pressure to rise to the top is great, some people will give in to the temptation and begin their very public fall from grace.

At the tone the time will be... an arm and a leg

For thousands of years man has been waking up and going to sleep and in between he has always asked the same question, a question that has pluaged every society, destroyed nations and united strangers, a question that will never die and had no birth.

It is the question that defines us: "when do we eat?"

And in the pursuit of that elusive answer lunchtime was created, and in order to keep track of lunchtime man invented the fourth dimension and 'time' was born. But time can rampant and started talking about 'early birds' and 'magic hour' and 'brunch' and man could not keep track of it all. Fearing that time may leave man for 'space' and 'relativity,' man decided to fashion a cage for time.

At first it was a crude device that depended on the orb in the sky and a pterodactyl that never complained much, only saying "hey it's a living" every now and then. But it was refined and over the years it evolved into a compact space that's often incorporated into microwaves and cell phones.

The clock has served humanity well, but the internet, as it often does, has decided that's boring and I'm inclined to agree.

Humanclock merges photography, community and technology into a fun applet for your computer desktop. The idea is simple, anybody can submit a picture of a minute of a 24 hour day and the Humanclock rotates through them in sequential order to display the correct time.

It's a creative project and a fun way of using old technology with new.

And if you prefer you can forgo Digital:

and go old skool with analog:

Multimedia Shooter contest winners

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but someone cruel once decided that humans need sleep.

If you're like me you're always looking for inspiration and one of the places I've found it was in looking over the winners of Multimedia Shooter's first anything-goes contest held last March.

There's a couple of really good pieces, some just off the wall (and just my type of humor), one very short Mark II envy-inducing clip (Canon are you listening?) and even one from some friends to the north.

Enjoy!

Here's hoping Richard has a chance to thrown another one of these. I'd love to see what my peers and "photo gods" are cooking up.

Light bent on itself?!

According to a report by Scientific America, researchers have developed a method of refracting light back on itself in the opposite direction than how it wants to natural bounce off a surface.

What's this mean, it's means there's some crazy stuff going on with the study of light and adjusant to that is the way we see.

The obvious application for this would be a cloaking devices for military applications, but I'm not interested in that.

I wonder what, if anything, this means for photography?

Another area of research involved the ability of certain materials to amplify light to make even the faintest of objects come in more clearly.

Given enough research and development this could mean greater ISO sensitivity and sharper images, and if adapted properly it could mean more accurate replication of film ISO, because in everything I have seen digital ISO and film ISO are not 1:1 equivalents and as great as high ISOs appear from a Mark II, it's never quite looked like the film counterparts that I learned with.

It could also mean better performance in low light situations. It's all very experimental and as of now the research is not aimed at photography, although I am sure it will be used in astronomy very soon.

Light fascinates me, so maybe I'm stretching to relate it to photography (why did I call this blog 'SLR'.. oh right, I thought it was clever), but this is some interesting research. Maybe we'll get some sort of new film stock out of this that will let us capture the world in new ways.

Even infrared was first developed as a scientific tool, and look at where that went. (Which reminds me, is solarizing a print a lost art?)

ducks and ethics

I ran into an ethical dilemma while on assignment at the Santa Cruz Sentinel today (and by today I mean when I wrote this, I have a bad habit on making everything a draft because I want to rewrite stuff), and it was a most fowl dilemma indeed.

(Thunder clap!)

Sorry I couldn't resist.

Anyhow, I was given an assignment for a story on the ducks-- and to a lesser extent the geese (which makes me wonder if Santa Cruz is a anti-goose town... but that's a topic for another blog)-- at Schwan Lake in Santa Cruz and the violation of laws that prohibit the feeding of said ducks.

So I arrived and right off the bat I decided that showing someone feeding the ducks would not be fair since it singles out this one person as committing a crime, so I decided to do compose my shots in a manner that would include a human element without actually identifying anyone.













But it turns out I over thought the situation because there was not a single person in sight. Back to the drawing board.

I changed my focus to making a visually appealing image from a nature angle, and I asked myself, "how would National Geographic do it?"

I decided to slowly approach the duck with a wide angle in hopes of having them approach me. I reasoned that these animals had become accustomed to being feed and therefore would come towards any human that treaded lightly in their direction.

I was wrong, they slowly waddled away, I'm convinced one of them gave me the duck equivalent of the middle finger when he turned his back to me, shock his tail feathers and kicked up the dirt behind me in my direction as he eyed me over his avian shoulder. Back to the drawing board.

I switched up lenses and walked around the lake for a while, hoping to compose a compelling picture that conveyed the story in a single shot, but the ducks were startled by my presence and kept swimming... er, floating?... away.

I was stumped, how was I going to get a picture of the ducks for the front page story that I'd be proud to have my name under in print?

I had already taken a few shots by this time as safeties and decided to try something.

I began to toss tiny pebbles and twings in the lake and near me to trick the ducks into thinking I was laying out a buffet. They approached and caught on quick and swam, floated or waddled away, but I snapped a few frames as they came toward me.

I was satisfied and decided to book it to my next assignment.

At the moment all I was thinking of was my deadlines and the stories I still needed to cover, but a few hours later as I sat down to edit my takes a thought that had been nagging me since I foraged the ground for the first pebble at the lake surfaced.

Was scattering the fake food, the bait, the lure if you prefer, ethical? Was it ethical for me to manipulate the behavior of the ducks to get the image I needed?

With people it's obvious. We would never ask a bride to shove cake in the face of her new husband a second time for the camera, or move a folding chair from the middle to the right third because it helps the composition, or ask a crying toddler to look up after he dropped his ice cream beacuse the green grass makes a better background, but what about with animals?

Do we extend the same ethical limits to animals that we place on humans? Or is their a loophole that excuses animals since they are no more aware of the camera than they are of us?

On the one hand, their behavior is already affected by my presence, on the other hand, tossing fake food is pre-mediated outright consciouses manipulation of reality.

Where do we draw the line?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but in the end I decided to go with the pictures I took before the "fishing" expedition. When it comes to matters like these, I feel I have to be able to answer to myself, and even though the ducks behaved differently since I was around, I see that as something that I can't help, but actively tossing pebbles (side note: I keep wanting to say rocks, but I get the feeling some people will think by rocks I mean giant boulders aimed at poor innocent ducks... pebbles just has a nicer connotation.) is something I can help.

That said, I still really not sure what the right answer is.

What do you think?

New faces, old faces, many laughes and a sunset on the beach

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of hanging out with some of the new students in the PJ program at San Jose State University during our NPPA chapter sponsored Spring Shootout in Capitola.

In between lessons of technique, I had a great time getting to know some of the new faces I keep seeing and finding out more about the thoughts floating around behind those faces.

Here's a bite-sized snack-sized taste of the day's events (extended cut to come).

Many of the students doubled up and turned the shoot into an opportunity to do some multimedia projects. One such project was Daniel Sato's exploration (and Mark II N envy inducement production) of movement and lyrical storytelling.

And if you'd like to see some of the projects, the students will be presenting them soon to their classes and then posting them to the SJSU NPPA website.

24 on|24 off :a documentary

"24 on|24 off" is a documentary where I shadowed the firefighters of the C-shift of Engine 2 in San Jose, Ca. My intention was to show the "family" side of life in the firehouse and rather than documenting the fires, which I saw as cliché, I wanted to go deeper into who these people were and how they live in this place that is both home and work.

This multimedia piece was created in the days before soundslides (remember, soundslides only blew up a year ago) and I culled it together using Adobe Premier and Audition, where I took the firefighter’s story and set it to a musical piece I edited together. My aim was to explore the full canvas of presentation and envelop the viewer in my piece. It also allowed me to change the pacing of the story and expand on the images to give a richer sense for who these men who live in this house for 24 hours at a time are.

They do more than fight fires; they have lives, personalities and develop friendships we seldom see.

The hills are cold with the sound of slush

As my friend Daniel Esch said last week, "Dude we're in beer country."

When I woke up this (Wednesday, thanks blogger spambots... well actually Feb. 28 now, thanks life) morning I expected to see some snow on Mt. Hamilton and the hills behind my house, it wasn't that unusual for up to an inch of snowfall on the peaks at least a few times each winter, but this time the snowfall was more more spread out and much thicker.

I have never seen the snow cover this far down the hill before and reports stated it was an astoniching four inches. If I'd had more time, I would of taken a drive up the hillside and gotten some better shots and thrown a snowball or two at anyone willing and able to engage in some frosty warfare, but I had to be an adult and go to work in Santa Cruz.

Of course if it snowed in San Jose, it also snowed in Santa Cruz. And just as I suspected, Ryan had already had his "let's do online talk," but then that's what happens when you combine Ryan with snowfall.

Over at the Sentinel Shmuel Thaler was able to wake up early and capture the snow basking in the morning light, and produced a slideshow of what snow pictures should look like.

A bit of overkill no?

Isn't this overkill? I guess if you shoot RAW or have one of those cameras that can shoot video to a CF card it makes sense... but something about this scares me. I don't know if I want all that space at risk of a frailer.

I really don't have much more to say about the topic, pretty short post... might be my shortest ever.

The story every journalist covers

So it took nearly two months but it finally happened, I finally got that story that everyone has to cover... gas prices.

It's basically the same story that everyone's shot a million times, in fact I shared a laugh last night with a friend who covered the same story a week prior at her paper.

The challange is to put your own spin on it and make it fresh.

Here's my take.

If those prices seem high, that's nothing. In just one day, the price at my usual spot went to $3.01 this morning at 8am... and was at $3.15 at 8pm as I drove home. And it's not even summer yet. Looks like we can't say, "It'll never go over $3" anymore, anyone want to venture a gamble on $4?

Now here is where I was going to post a pic of a gas prices picture I really think hits the mark, but I can't find it, mostly beacuse it was taken almost three years ago and google has way too many gas prices pictures to find this particular one. But I guess I can describe it and why I liked it.

It's a pretty simple picture and what the photographer did was snap the price board through a window covered in water droplets from the rain and they've selectivly focused on the reflections in the droplets. It's a pretty simple picture, but it's stayed with me over the years becuase it took the ordinary and made it extordinary. Took the hum drum assignment and make it something visually striking. That's what I think we should all strive for on every assignment, if you can't please yourself, it's not good enough. Gee, I only wish I could show this image now. I've probably made it sound like the greatest gas prices picture ever, and for me, it ranks up there pretty high.

Lastly, gas prices keep going up and we have to keep paying... but here's something to help put it all in a lighter light.

Canon hits the mark a third time

Canon continues to release new product on a semi-regular schedule, announcing the Mark III last week, a camera which looks to be the new benchmark for the fastest apparatus yet.

According to a press release, "The Mark III has a ten megapixel APS-H (1.3x FOV crop) CMOS sensor and can shoot at ten frames per second. It features the updated DIGIC III image processor, a new 19 area Auto Focus system, up to ISO 6400 and a 3.0" LCD monitor (with a live view feature). The Mark III should ship in April for US $3999."

I'm most excited about the advances from the new chipset. There looks to be greater latitude with greater crispness up to ISO 3200. That's great news for the next time you have to shoot in a dark alternative art show, a dimly lit high school gym or for spot news during a riot downtown.

And here's a feature that's long been overdue. A new AF button has been incorporated on the camera back, that may seem trivial, but think about all the times you've wanted to switch over to manual focus on the fly but had to flip the camera over to flip a switch on a Nikon or slide a button on a Canon. By the time you've done it all the moment you saw has passed and you're switching back to AF. Well Canon saw fit to finally address this nuisance and added a button they promise will allow you to instantly switch auto focus on or off while keeping the eye on the viewfinder. Sweet! And long overdue. We'll see how well it works, but I love the idea.

Canon also promises a brighter viewfinder. I never noticed any problems with the Mark II N, 20D, or 5D, but brighter is better I guess... but it does make me wonder if it's an electric eye now, I hope not. But the new LCD shooting mode, where you use the LCD screen for a viewfinder, does make me fear the worst.

There's improved metering, a self-cleaning system similar to the one found in the new Rebel and the viewfinder also offers a wider angle of view, so now the boarder you see in the viewfinder will be pretty darn close to the one you see in Photoshop. Although it was never that egregious as it is now.

The specs look impressive on paper.

I'm not sure we need it, but I want it.

Actually I don't want it, but I am glad it's been announced. For one, there should be a price drop on the Mark II N, the camera it replaces, but more important, we'll see some of these new features trickle down to the XXD series cameras.

You know those 10D, 20D, 30D (40D?) cameras that aren't as sexy as the Marks but are just as good and give great results in a small form factor. Sure it's all plastic, but you save a G, so don't complain.

Afterall, it's not the gear, it's the eye behind the gear.

Will it be two in a row for the Rocky Mountain News?

After winning a Pulitzer prize in 2006 for Final Salute, a brilliant piece that chronicles the travels of Maj. Steve Beck as he travels from family to family informing them that their loved one isn't coming home from the battle on the other side of the world, the Colorado paper looks poised to do it again.

Final Salute put to print an unknown. It was a side of the operations in the Middle East that we had seldom seen to that point, our government was very careful up to this point in keeping images of dead American soldiers out of the frame of a photographer's camera.

This year The Rocky Mountain News is working on another very ambitious and meticulously crafted piece that also hopes to shine light were no one has looked before, and they're doing it with a human touch.



















"The Crossing" reflects on a school bus accident that took the lives of 20 children and left 16 others and their bus driver to live on in their absence.

Some cope better than others and a community responds, but the beauty of The Crossing is that it isn't about the accident or about the tragedy, it's about the lives that came from that mutual experience and the people they became. And at 33 chapters, number 20 just went live as I write this, it's multifaceted in a way that is necessary to take such a piece beyond informative to influential.

It's worth a look, and the presentation and in particular the use of audio is an a prime of example of how it can and should be done better.