latoga photography

William Christenberry on Studio 360

latoga — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:44:20 +0000

One of the radio programs on my local NPR station that seems to have been featuring photographers quite often is Studio 360. In the episode that I caught part of last night they did an interview with William Christenberry that I found interesting. Christenberry is a photographer, painter, and sculptor who was born in 1936 in Alabama. Since the early 1970’s, he has been documenting the morphing rural landscape of his childhood home. I found Christenberry’s description of how Walker Evens helped to influence his photography interesting — shows how we sometimes never end up where we intend.

2009 Q2 Links of Thanks

latoga — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:25:57 +0000

I hope everyone enjoyed the recent Holiday weekend here in the States and had a very productive second quarter of 2009. I know I did, even though you can’t tell it from the blog. Most of my time for the past three months has been monopolized with my day job with way too much time spent on the computer. Which means there wasn’t much time or energy left for photography or blog postings. I have a goal of changing that this coming quarter (I’m using RescueTime to better understand what I do on the computer so I can make changes where needed, we’ll see in 90 days if this works).

On to the links of thanks. As I have been doing for a while, below are the top 20 websites that directed traffic to my site over the second quarter. I like to highlight them as a way of saying thank you. Please check out those that you may not be familiar with. And visit your any old haunts you may have frequented before. And if you want to see yourself on this list, I always appreciate links back to my site!

(Rankings from last quarter, if they made the top 20, appear in parentheses after each site.)

latogaphoto.com Top Referring Sites from 2009 Q2

Maintenance Notice

latoga — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:51:46 +0000

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I did some back end maintenance on the blog tonight. If anyone notices anything that doesn’t look right, please let me know. The maintenance was rather simple, but you know Murphy and his darn law…

Happy 4th of July

latoga — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:23:35 +0000

I hope everyone in the United States had a wonderful and safe 4th of July Holiday weekend. I took advantage of the holiday time to relax, work on a few projects that have been sitting idle for way to long, and take some photos of the local firework displays. The above photo was taken from the 17th hole of the local golf course which overlooks the city of San Ramon, CA. My family (and about 50 other family’s from the neighborhood) were able to catch the local firework display from this wonderful vista. Click through to see more photos from the 4th of July as well as photos from the Pleasanton, CA firework display on the 3rd of July.

Photo: Winter River from Yosemite

latoga — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:38:37 +0000

Winter River from Yosemite

Nothing like getting close to the start of Summer to enjoy a crisp, refreshing winter image from Yosemite. I found this image much more engaging when the color of the tree trunks was left in versus a 100% black and white. Not what my original hunch was when I started working on this photo — as it was overcast and snowing when I took this image, which I thought would lend itself to a black and white — but I guess that goes to show not to depend on pre-conceived notions.

Speaking of getting close to summer, it’s amazing how quickly the past two month flew by. I have been kept quite busy with all the other things in life other than photography. (Gasp! There are such things?) Actually, that’s not entirely true as I have been doing some behind the scenes print work that I’m hoping to be able to debut here soon…just need to take the time to finish a last few items on the website before I can do that. Anyway, I’m trying to fit in the time to post more soon…just wanted to let you know what was up.

Costco Photo Contest Fails Photographers

latoga — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:00:01 +0000

Tonight my wife dropped the latest edition of the Costco magazine in my lap, opened to a page talking about the Costco International Photo Contest 2009. For some reason she still tells me about ever photo contest she finds even thought I usually don’t have the time nor willingness to participate in them. The willingness part is due to the fact that most Photo Contests are blatant rights grabs for the photos that are submitted. And the 2009 Costco competition appears to be no better.

From the Official Rules listed in the magazine:

10. Entrant confirms and promises that entry is original and does not infringe on the intellectual property rights of any third party. By participating, entrant agrees that ownership of the entry and all intellectual property rights in the entry is assigned to Costco, and will do all things necessary to give effect to that assignment. Entrant agrees to sign any further documentation require by Costco to give effect to this clause.

So first, Costco wants to makes sure that you are not infringing on someone elses rights and then tells you that they will infringe upon yours! How very sad that a corporate entity would take advantage of it’s customers like that.

The Costco photo contents doesn’t pass The Bill of Rights for Photography Competition sniff test.

When I went to the website for the competition, I noticed that the rules listed there are different and seem to be missing this statement, with no reference to the statement ever being there. So which set of rules apply? Typically the ones on the website, but in this case it’s too ambiguous to tell since I’m no lawyer. With all this ambiguity in the rules, there is no way I would participate in this contest nor suggest any photographer participate.

Photographers beware…

Black Wildlife in White Yosemite

latoga — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:31:59 +0000

Here it is almost June and I am processing photos from the last winter snow storm of the season to hit Yosemite, from back in March! Better turn around time than other images that still languish in the dark rescesses of my hard drives.

While capturing a number of the other high elevation Yosemite valley photos you can see in the Yosemite portfolio, I kept being pestered by this crow who seemed to enjoy sitting in the trees at 1ooo feet above the valley floor…the trees right in front of my tripod! Eventually he flew off to the left of me and I was able to capture him as he enjoyed the view from the retaining wall of the road descending to Yosemite Valley. Like a good model, he looked right at the camera and struck a pose…

Morning View from 1480 Feet

latoga — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:05:14 +0000

I realize that it has been a while since I last posted. The past month has blown by in a whirl wind of day job activity, business travel to the East Coast, and dealing with a case of the flu (not sure which kind…). I think my body is still recovering from flu and antibiotics which are just now wearing off, I say that because this morning the Mrs and I got up early for a morning hike in the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness area and climbing the trail to the ridge was a lot more taxing on my physically than it should have been.

iPhone View from Las Trampas Ridge

One of the great parts about living in the Bay Area is the East Bay Regional Parks District. A large collection of open space area in the east bay that creates wonderful buffer between the cities as well as provides a much overlooked set of recreational space. Because of these open space areas, the East Bay has prevented the type of suburban sprawl that Southern California is known for (not to mention restricting the amount of space available to developers and helping to drive up the Bay Area housing costs). Most locals to the Bay Area drive right by these parks on their daily commutes and don’t even know that they are there, which is a shame as some of the best views of the San Francisco area are obtained from the ridge trails of these parks.

The above photo was taken from one of the parks about 8 miles from my house. After a 45 minute climb of about 500 feet up to the ridge trail (which is at about 1500 feet elevation), this was the view that we were greeted with. I took this with my iPhone as I’m still not recovered enough from the flu to be caring 40 pounds of camera gear on my back and hike that trail. It’s hard to tell in this photo, but the most distant ridge barely visible above and to the right of the red roofed house is actually Twin Peaks and San Francisco. And during the course of the hike to the ridge, we climbed in elevation up past that red roofed house, at about half way up the trail we were below that house and couldn’t even see it. Yes, next time I’ll bring the big camera with…

I’m struggle to catch up on the the things that I have fallen behind on over the past month. One of those being my photography and postings here. More to come soon…

Photo: Surreal Yosemite Valley

latoga — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:35:45 +0000

Surreal Yosemite Valley

This image has become my favorite image from my recent trip to Yosemite. This is a perfect example of why photographers need to get out when the weather is bad. It was windy, cold (one photographer I meet had a portable stove with and was making coffee to keep warm), snowing now and again, and the light was changing by the minute. It was amazing!

Since I have had a number of requests already: Yes, art prints of this image are available. Just click through on the photo and use the buy button. I’m working on making a limited number of fine art prints available as well…working through some web site issues to enable that, so stay tuned.

2009 Q1 Links of Thanks

latoga — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:19:58 +0000

Where has the time gone. 3 months have already passed from 2009 and that means it’s time again for my links of thanks to the top sites who sent traffic my way. Help me return the favor by checking out these other sites…

(Rankings from last quarter, if any, appear in parentheses after each site.)

latogaphoto.com Top Referring Sites from 2009 Q1