This photo, which I shot during the eclipse, does, indeed, show what appear to be non-silhouetted palm trees with the sun beginning its eclipsing cycle rising in the sky behind them. But other than a little lightening of the image, there is no Photoshop involved. “How so?” you may ask.

During the Stockton Astronomical Society’s eclipse viewing party, Bill Maxwell of Stockton came up to me with a welder’s helmet and bade me to shoot through it. As I brought the camera up to my eye, I didn’t stick my head all the way into the helmet. Instead I stood back just a bit. Although the intensity of the sun was diminished because of the helmet’s thick, dense glass, it shone through, and nothing else did. By standing back a bit, I could see and photograph the reflection of the blue sky and palm trees that were behind me as well and made it look that it was all one scene.

On May 20 an annular eclipse graced the skies over Northern California for a rare celestial treat. An annular eclipse doesn’t cover the sun completely the way a total eclipse does. In an annular eclipse, the moon is at its farthest point when it comes between the Earth and the Sun, so it doesn’t completely cover the sun. In the prime viewing areas, the eclipse appears as a firery ring. Stockton was just out of the optimal path and experienced a partial eclipse, but still about 90% of the Sun’s disk was covered by the moon.

Viewing any eclipse without proper eye protection is dangerous. Even with the sun partially covered, it is so bright that looking at it with the unaided eye can cause immediate and permanent damage.

The Stockton Astronomical Society held a special eclipse viewing party in an empty lot along the Stockton Waterfront. They had several telescopes specially outfitted to block out the harmful rays of the sun for the curious to view the eclipse safely. They ranged in size from about 1-½ feet long to seemingly near Howitzer proportions. Most looked pretty pricey, too. Even my rig that I used to photograph the eclipse was expensive. I used a Nikkor 200-400mm lens with a 1.7 telextender with was about the equivalent focal length of 650mm. I attached it to a Nikon D300 camera. With its 1.5 crop factor due to its smaller sensor size, the whole thing worked out to be about the same as a 975mm lens relative to a full-frame camera.

But there are cheaper alternatives at the viewing party as well.
The coolest of which was called a Sunspotter, a wooded device shaped a bit like a sextant that, through a series of mirrors and lenses, created an image of the sun on a white piece of paper.

Society members also handed out special eclipse viewing glasses to the viewing public. Much like the old cardboard 3-D glasses given out with comic books, the lenses were made of dense mylar (I used a pair to help aim my camera towards the sun). They were useless for anything but looking at the sun but provided a clear and way to look at the eclipse directly.

Stockton Astronomical Society member Albert Liang not only had his own rather impressively big telescope rigged up, but he also brought along a viewer that he made himself. It was a small cardboard box about the size of a shoebox. In one end he poked a pinhole that, when pointed at the sun, projected its image on the inside bottom if the box. He cut away one side of the box so that people could look in to see the small projected image of the eclipse. It was the same principal of a pinhole camera or a camera obscura, where a small hole is the lens and aperture.

Just after the eclipse reached its height and I finished my shooting, I headed back to my car. On its surface I saw dozens, maybe hundreds, of small replicas of the crescent sun. The nearby tree that I had parked under to shade my car from the heat of the sun’s solar rays acted much like Liang’s small pinhole projector. The small gaps that normally created dapple sunlight patterns became lens/apertures and focused images of the eclipse on whatever the light touched.

So the next time an eclipse happens (the next one in North America is scheduled for Aug. 21, 2017) make sure to protect your eyes. One way would be to make a pinhole creation like Liang. Or easier yet, just find a nearby tree.

On May 16 I covered the CIF San Joaquin Section Track and Field trials at Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove. A track meet isn’t just a single event but several with more than one happening at the same time. A section meet has teams from all over the region, many outside of The Record’s coverage area. We try to focus on our own local athletes.

The 400 meter heats were about to start so I positioned myself just outside of the track so I could get shots of the runners rounding the 3rd turn with a long 200-400mm telephoto zoom lens. Fortunately, my spot also provided a good view of the boys high jump, which was already in progress.

I’ve been covering the schools long enough that I know most of the team colors: Lincoln and Lodi are red, Edison, maroon, Bear Creek bright blue. I was focused on the start of the 400 when out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of purple on the young man making an attempt in the high jump. To me that meant he must be from Tokay High School in Lodi which purple is the school’s color. I wheeled the lens from the track towards the jump. I barely got my shots of as he jumped. A quick chimp (review of the camera’s monitor) revealed the athlete’s perfect curl over the bar in a graceful arc. The picture even had the sign that showed the height at which he was jumping, 5’-9”. It was one of my best shots of the day. Satisfied with the shot I moved on to the other events.

But later when I took a closer look at the white lettering across the jumper’s chest it didn’t read “Tokay” but rather “Franklin.” Funny, I thought to myself, Franklin’s colors are yellow and green. Then it dawned me: This athlete was from Franklin of Elk Grove who’s colors are identical to Tokay’s.

I went back and shot more of the high jump and got shots of a Stagg athlete and even a Tokay jumper (yes, I did double check). But the best shot turned out to be one I couldn’t use.

The way a print was made back in the old days of film was that, in a darkened room illuminated only by a yellow (or sometimes red) safelight, a negative was placed into an enlarger through which a light was shone onto a piece of light-sensitive paper made of an emulsion of silver halides. The paper was then placed in a tray of liquid developer for several minutes. Once the print reached its full development it was taken out then placed into another tray of a slightly acidic solution called a stop bath. This stopped the developing action of the print. Then it was moved over to yet another solution called the fixer. The fixer cleared any undeveloped sliver from the print and “fixed” or stabilized the remaining image onto the paper. After a few minutes in the fixer, the print would be able to be taken out into regular white light.

I was cleaning out an old closet recently and came across a box of old 8 x 10 black and white photographic prints, some of them made more than 20 years ago. One photo in particular caught my eye. It was of a flock of pigeons perched on a streetlight. It had obviously not spent enough time in the fixer. The image areas were beginning to fade, and a large rust-like splotch swirled across the picture’s surface, indicating an improperly fixed print. It looked a little like a photo shot via Instagram and processed through one of its artsy filters, no camera phone or special app needed.

It’s not a place that many would normally associate with a beautiful scene. As I stood near the center of a bridge over the slough, I looked straight down. I could see the partially submerged wheels of a couple of abandoned shopping carts that had been dumped there. But looking beyond that, a thin ribbon of the slough snaked its way past the tule reeds lining it toward the horizon. The colors of the setting sun turned the clouds from a vibrant orange to a deep purple. The water reflected some of those colors as well as some open blue sky.

I got my shots and headed back to my car. Walking toward me on the shoulder of the road was a family: a young father and mother pushing a baby in a stroller accompanied by their son, who was about 7 or 8 years old. They appeared to be walking back to the Conway homes area from shopping at the Food 4 Less about half mile way. We passed each other, and as they reached the spot where I had taken my photographs, I turned back to see the young boy point toward the sunset and say to his parents: “look!” They turned and smiled at the natural beauty before them. The dad took out his cell phone and took a picture.

It can be a bit disconcerting and embarrassing when confronted with a stereotype you didn’t even think you had. It didn’t occur to me to think that low-income people would concern themselves with art and beauty. Not that they don’t have the capacity to appreciate them, but rather that they probably have more pressing priorities, such as finding money to feed and house their families. Certainly art had to be way down on their list of priorities. But the young family proved me wrong. They took a picture in the very spot where moments before I had stood to take mine. They enjoyed the beauty of the sunset just as I had done. I got in my car and headed back to the office satisfied in the pictures I had shot of the sunset and happy that there were others who appreciated it as much as I had.

Art isn’t for just a select few. It’s open to everyone to either create or to appreciate no matter where you fall on the socio-economic scale. For beauty isn’t found in one’s pocketbook but in one’s the heart, mind and soul.

Like some people who watch hockey mostly for the fights or those who watch motorsports for the crashes, it’s possible that at least some people watch competitive eating for the gross-out factor.

While categorizing competitive eating as a “sport” is debatable, there’s no denying it can be pretty disgusting to watch.

Case in point is the annual deep-fried-asparagus eating contest at the annual Asparagus Festival in Stockton. The standard technique that the top “eaters” use is grabbing a fistful of asparagus then breaking them in half with both hands and then ramming them forcefully into their mouths, vigorously chewing all the way.

I don’t know what it’s like for the contestants, but watching them can be downright stomach-turning. The lesson that your mom taught you of chewing with your mouth closed does not apply here. The chewing is so fast and furious that little bits of food can either fly off into the air or get stuck to their faces. Their food-stuffed maws get stretched and distended giving them a vaguely chimpanzee-like look. The whole scene not only can put one off from not only eating asparagus but eating at all.

Top eating competitor Patrick Bertoletti, who holds a number of eating records, goes one better than his opponents on the gross scale. Each competitor gets a number of cups of water to help wash down their mouthfuls of asparagus. Bertoletti adds a red mix to each cup. As the 10-minute contest wears on, his hands and lips become stained with the red stuff. Soon it runs down in long bloody drips down to his elbows. By the contest’s end Bertoletti, who’s already distinctive with his spiked Mohawk hairstyle, looks like a vampire who’s just finished a feeding frenzy.

As long as I’ve covered the contest Bertoletti has always been an also-ran the competition coming in second to world-record holder Joey Chestnut. This year he came in third behind Chestnut and the diminutive Matt Stonie, who was second. But as far as the gross-out factor is concerned, Bertoletti has to be No. 1.

Fisheye lenses are a bit in their limited use. While they provide a very wide angle of view (at least 180 degrees) and almost unlimited depth of field there’s a price to pay in the distortion that the extreme wide angle causes. They’re not fit for portraiture or architecture unless you want to make your subjects look strange and misshapened.

The most common are the full-frame fisheyes. The angle the lens views is 180 degrees measured from one corner to the opposite corner, such as the Nikkor 16mm and Canon’s 15mm. Then there are other fisheyes that encompass the entire view of the lens. This results in a round image on the sensor or film frame. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s an effect that’s certainly eye-catching. I’m just not sure it’s worth buying a whole lens just for that purpose.

The Grays of Westminster camera store in London, which deals exclusively in Nikon equipment, has announced the sale of a vintage 1972 Nikkor 6mm f/2.8 fisheye lens. Weighing in about 11.7 pounds, the thing is huge (by comparison Nikon’s top of the line D3 camera, which is only about 2-1/2 pounds). Its pie tin-sized front element measures about 9.3 inches in diameter. The lens’ angle of view is more than the fisheye standard of 180 degrees. It’s 220 degrees, which means it can actually see slightly behind itself.

I recently had an assignment at the Salvation Army’s facility in Lodi. On the ceiling of the tight foyer was one of those round extremely wide-angle safely mirrors to keep people from bumping into each other around blind corners. I got directly under it and shot straight up for a self-portrait.

The Nikon 6 mm lens was sold for the tidy sum of about $160,000 (!). I know it was a mirror and not a true fisheye lens, but the effect was like one with the wide field of view, the distorted lines and even the circular, marble-like format and it didn’t cost me a dime.

Letter press is old technology that harkens back to when type was set by hand. The plates have words and images that are raised from the surface. If you run your hand over one, you can actually feel the letters and dots that make up the pictures. Ink is run over the raised parts and then transferred to paper. It’s the same idea of a wood block print, though more sophisticated.

Built in the 1950s, the old Goss was fine for black and white pictures but was never meant for color reproduction. The way color is rendered in newspapers is that the press is actually four presses in one. Each section of the press applies a different color of ink: cyan (blue), magenta, yellow and black. It’s also known as CMYK. So, in addition to the crudity of the letter press system, there is the problem of what’s known as registration. Each plate for each color has to align with the others, and if one or more is off even as little as a 1/16th of an inch, the registration can be thrown off and color pictures could look blurry. Our press guys did the best they could but the cantankerous old machine’s plates would he hard to align and sometimes shift while the press was running, and the photos would be out of registration (the joke around the newsroom was that we should send out 3-D glasses out with every paper).

In 2005 the new TKS Tower Offset Press was installed in a new building on the Record’s site and was a welcome change for the photographers on staff. Although offset presses have been around a long time, they are much newer than the old letter-press systems. It uses the same CMYK process, but the plates are smooth to the touch with no raised areas. They work on the principal of water and oil not mixing. Pictures and words are burned into a much thinner metal plate in a photographic process. The oil-based inks adhere to the image areas, while a thin sheath of water keeps the ink off of the non-image areas. This allows for more detailed and accurate images to be reproduced in the paper.

The TKS press was bright, shiny and new and meant there were very few registration problems. The pictures carried much finer detail and had a more faithful color rendition. It was a welcome change. We hit the ground running with it and, happily, never looked back.

The Goss has been sitting idle since 2005 in old pressroom at the back of the old building — out of sight, out of mind. Now it’s been sold for scrap and is being dismantled and hauled away.
Some may be wistful about seeing it go. After all, there have been a lot of great stories, big and small, that have been printed on it. But for photographers, whose images suffered at the hands of the ornery metal beast, it’s goodbye and good riddance.

“Carlo disappeared into the back room for a moment, then returned with an ordinary shoe box. He opened the lid and removed a hideous pair of black and white pumps. But these were not an ordinary pair of black and white pumps; both were left feet, one had a right angled turn with separate compartments that pointed the toes in impossible directions. The other shoe was six inches long and was curved inward like a rocking chair with a vise and razor blades to hold the foot in place.” – an excerpt from “Cruel Shoes” by Steve Martin

In general, the qualities that a man looks for in a pair of shoes are comfort and practicality. How a shoe looks tends to be secondary. Many women’s shoes, on the other hand, are made more for looks. While most women have at least one pair of sensible shoes, there are probably others in her closet that are designed more for fashion than for comfort. On April 21 a group of men found out what it’s like to walk in women’s shoes.

The Women’s Center of San Joaquin County held its 5th annual “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” march, this time along the Miracle Mile in Stockton. The event is a fundraiser for the center, but also it’s held to raise awareness and to involve men in ending rape, sexual assault and gender violence.

There were many styles of shoes to choose from, and many men looked for the flattest shoes possible. But there were also quite a few who gravitated toward red pumps with about 3” heels.

When the march started down the course, a loop down from Tuxedo Avenue to Castle Avenue to Harding Way and then back up to Tuxedo, everyone was enthusiastic and raring to go. At about the halfway point, I asked John Thorpe and Stephen Maney how they were holding up. Thorpe, who was wearing knee-high silver platform disco boots, said that he was doing OK, but he wouldn’t want to wear them every day. Maney, who opted for a pair of the red pumps and was stepping gingerly, could only say: “I’m dying!”

Not too far behind Thorpe and Maney, Sahil Kumar, also wearing the red pumps, was lagging near the rear of the pack. He was clearly having trouble. Weaving like a drunken sailor, Kumar’s ankles gave way and he tripped and stumbled with nearly every step. I don’t know how he managed to say upright, but he did. He reminded me of the old Playskool tagline: ”Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” Great cries of “whoa” and “ooh” went out from the few people behind Kumar each time he would stumble and nearly fall, and then cheers immediately afterward when he managed to catch himself and recover. He completed the mile safe and sound, though I bet his ankles probably thanked him when he finally took off the shoes.

There are macho terms of “Be a man” and “man up,” meaning to be tough, to take pain or adversity. Sahil Kumar proved that even in 3-inch red pumps, he could still walk like a man.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amoré” – That’s Amoré by Harry Warren and Jack Brooks

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s supermoon! While it may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, tonight’s full moon is known as a supermoon, also called perigee-syzygy in astronomical terms. Because of its slightly elliptical orbit our natural satellite will be at its closest point to earth and coinciding with a complete full moon at about 11:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (which makes it around 8:35 p.m. here). It should appear up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than an average moon.

If you want a close shot of the moon a telephoto lens is a must. The minimum length should be around a 300mm to 400mm lens. Even then it will only fill up about 20 percent of the frame. Most photo editing programs will allow you to crop in tight and enlarge the image. If you have the wherewithal to buy a big really lens, a 600mm to 800mm with an extender would be optimum. Of course, if you have a telescope with camera mount (or know someone who does) all the better.

You may think that the exposure for a full moon would require a long time-exposure due to the surrounding darkness. But the light falling on the moon is about the same as a bright sunny day here on Earth. The best bet is to set your camera on manual (automatic settings will be probably fooled by the big dark sky) and for an exposure for sunshine depending upon the ISO you’re using (for example: at ISO 200 try 1/500th of a second at around f/11 or f/8). Atmospheric conditions (clouds, smog) may cut down on the exposure, but you can just shoot and then chimp (review the monitor) the picture and adjust your settings accordingly.

Fortunately the forecast calls for breezy but clear skies. To get a good look at the supermoon all you have to do is go outside and look up, up and away.