Crown Fire Threatens Home

Last night (7/29), I noticed the smell of a brush fire after dinner and went outside to observe the spectacle captured in the photos below.  Apparently some knuckleheads trying to remove a tire by banging on the rim with a hammer started what is being called the Crown Fire.  As I write this (10pm), it has burned 13,000 acres and is only 20% contained.

The bulk of the fire scorched Leona Valley and Leona Valley is at the end of our street.  There’s a high school at the end of our block and, at one point, there were about thirty police cars in the parking lot preparing to enforce an evacuation. Luckily it didn’t come to that, although the area I run in is pretty much wiped out.

With the exception of the “scorched earth” image that I shot this morning, everything was photographed from our front balcony. The photos fail to capture the anxiety everyone in the neighborhood was feeling (our next door neighbors actually packed up and left); the thick, acrid smoke that had everyone’s eyes watering; the ash that fell like snow; and the smell that has permeated everything.

Ah, the joys of living in the peripheral areas of Southern California…

The view after dinner...

.... dessert...

 

 

...and cocktails.

 

The morning after.

I want to thank the idiots who were too stupid to go to the local tire store for burning up the park I run in - and killing and displacing God-knows-how-many animals.  I never really thought our house was in jeopardy, but Kathy did and lots of other people were very worried.  There isn't a ridgeline or mountainside within view that isn't a smoldering wasteland.  I'm so pissed off.  Somebody ought to beat those guys in the head with their hammer.

New Photo

I finally got around to both re-shooting and completing a jpeg "sketch" of what I've decided to simply call "Broadway."

"Broadway" took about an hour to shoot and about another four to "sketch."  I call this a sketch because this comprises processed jpegs.  I do this to give myself an idea of how to approach the final RAW processing.


This is a very low-resolution version because the full-size file is huge.  At full scale the jpeg image prints at 26”x64”.  The final version will be even bigger.  It is a 6-element panorama, with each element comprising 6 exposures of varying duration, totaling 36 exposures.  Each element was processed separately in Photoshop – with multiple correction layers and masks -  before being merged into the single image.  That image was then extensively processed utilizing more than 25 layers (and just about everything I know how to do in Photoshop).  And, voila!

The Orpheum Theater is a classic from the '20s and, as you can see, is one of the few old theaters on Broadway that is still working.  It appears in many TV shows and commercials, many of which pretend to be elsewhere, like New York or Washington DC.  Even the parking lot frame left made an appearance in "Castle," set in New York.

The guy who owns the Orpheum (and the apparently-closed Broadway Bar) seemed to be very concerned about the image of his property.  While I was shooting, he sent a flunky out to bother me.  He told me that I'd have to have the owner's permission to photograph the building.  He said he might even call the police.  I politely told him that I could legally photograph anything visible from the public street, including the theater.  That, and my not being remotely intimidated, probably explains why he left and never came back.  I don't know what they were worried about.  Maybe they thought I was going to draw a really embarrassing mustache over the marquee.  

Borax Mine Lockout

For several months earlier this year, Rio Tinto, the owners of the largest borax mine in the US - located about an hour away in Boron, CA - locked out their workforce during a dispute over a new labor contract.


My friend Terry Phillips, who hosts a weekly public affairs radio program on KPVR in Fresno and regularly contributes stories to NPR, asked me to go with him to Boron to capture images to accompany a story he was preparing for NPR on the lockout.  We were both left with the impression that the workers were getting insufficient and inaccurate information from their representatives.  At the same time, the mine's supervisors were extremely frustrated because they believed that if they could just speak to the locked-out workers directly, they could end the conflict immediately.  This, of course, was prohibited.  All information going to the workers had to go through their representatives and the company's managers had to deal with, what appeared to Terry and me, a torrent of disinformation.  In the end, the dispute was settled largely on the company's terms.  If the workers and supervisors had been able to work this out themselves, it probably would have been resolved months earlier.


The workers didn't win.  They lost thousands in wages.  The company didn't win.  They lost productivity and had to deal with the complications and delays of the lockout.  The already-down-on-its-heels town of Boron didn't win.  It took a huge fiscal shot.  The only people who won here, I think, are the attorneys who "represented" the union workers.  They got paid, I'm sure, a great deal to string this thing out as long as possible.


In any event, I got some interesting photos of a real live work action.

The bustling town Boron.

Boron residents attempt to explain the situation.

Scabs arrive for the night shift.

Tellin' it to the man.

Protectors:  just who do they protect?

COLOR Magazine Publication

I got published in the March, 2010 issue of COLOR Magazine.  I received a Merit Award for "Plus Size," a photo taken in LA's Fashion District in 2009.