Huntington Beach Kites

Photo: Kiteboarding Kites, Huntington Beach, California

It's hard to believe that a few days ago it was overcast and 60-something degrees. Today it is around 100 degrees. I would imagine that Huntington Beach doesn't look this way either today.

I don't do much high-key photography but it looked interesting on my computer in this case. Does anybody else feel the same way?

Huntington Beach Kiteboarding

Picture of Kiteboarder Flying Over Waves, Huntington State Beach, California

There weren't that many people at the beach because it was cold. The cool part though was there were quite a few kiteboarders out there riding the waves. I had never seen this sport before so I wasn't sure how to anticipate the moves. I only took a few pictures but this one was my favorite.

The Electric Riverboat Angela Louise

The Electric Riverboat Angela Louise at Balboa Fun Zone, Newport Beach, California

Writer's block doesn't just happen to writers. I have been to Balboa Island and the Peninsula a number of times in the past year or so with the intention of adding some images to my collection. Each time I couldn't get myself to take any pictures so I ended up going to other places to take photos afterward. Then something clicked last week. The price of gas. It's too expensive these days to squander trips without taking publishable pictures.

Balboa is a nice place to take a date and have some fun, but the beaches really aren't that photogenic here unless you like taking people pictures. They are just long stretches of flat beach without any unique geological features and few unique attractions. The opposite side of Main Street faces Newport Harbor though and has the Balboa Fun Zone. This is where the tourist attractions are located. The most recognizable landmark here is the Balboa Pavilion. What caught my eye though was the electric riverboat.

Freedom of Speech Photography Video

May Day Illegal Immigration March, Downtown Los Angeles

Disclaimer: I generally stay away from taking political stances on my website except for environmental issues. With that said, I take pictures and I talk about photography experiences. That's it.

Picture: May Day Illegal Immigration March, Los Angeles, California


Yesterday morning I took the Metro Gold Line from Old Town Pasadena to Union Station because most of the streets near the Civic Center were shut down for the various protests in Downtown L.A. From there I walked all the way down to Broadway and Olympic where the illegal immigration rights group gathered. Initially there were about as many LAPD officers there as protesters but the crowd grew the closer it got to the 2pm starting time. It was easier to get pictures when the crowd was smaller in size, but the peak moments of action happened once the march started heading down Broadway toward 1st & Temple where The Times Building and Civic Center are located.

It may seem really obvious, but the key insight about photographing these sorts of events is the people want their picture taken. Unlike day-to-day scenes where it would be rude to do so, here it is a tailor-made situation to shove a 17mm lens in the faces of the subjects. The difficulty in shooting something like this with a wide-angle is that when you find an interesting sequence for taking pictures, five other photographers suddenly show up right after and often end up in the edges of your frames. Hit the delete button and hopefully you have 5-10 other similar images to pick from.

This photo was taken at the front of the pack with the entire crowd behind the flag. It was a pretty fast moving march so it required backtracking while taking photos others you will get trampled. I don't know very much Spanish but the crowd was generally speaking out against federal raids that arrest illegal immigrants and deport them back to their country of origin. The separation of families was a major theme of their argument. There was also a strong anti-Bush sentiment in the crowd and a desire to elect either Clinton or Obama to the White House.

My ultimate goal was to get a photo that captured tension between the LAPD and the protesters but it was mostly peaceful in this group aside from a few arguments between security and marchers.

Beverly Hills 90210

Photo: Versace Store on Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California

It felt kinda weird to be roaming around Rodeo Drive with a professional camera because the paparazzi has such a bad reputation in LA. But then again, anybody who shops in these places probably wants to be seen anyway. Parking was expensive and is charged by fifteen minute intervals so I made a quick "hit and run" type of photo shoot at Rodeo Drive which is basically walking really quickly through for a scouting session and walking back the other direction to get the photos. I did it in exactly 15 minutes.

I used to watch the Beverly Hills 90210 TV series when I was younger mainly because I had a crush on Jennie Garth, but that has really nothing to do with photography so I'll leave it at that. :-) TV makes things seem more fairytale-like than real life but Rodeo Drive really is a very beautiful shopping district. It's not that big, but it does live up to its reputation. I had cruised by a few times before while heading down Sunset Boulevard to the coast, but never actually walked around before yesterday so that was kinda cool to say I've finally been to Rodeo Drive.

On Thursday I'll probably be back in touch with real life as I might photograph the immigration march in Downtown L.A.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood

Picture: Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California

If I didn't shoot pictures for stock, then I would probably do nearly 100% scenic landscape photography. Maybe someday I will get there, but for now I also have to photograph a fair amount of material for marketability purposes. Despite the millions of snapshots taken from these places, iconic locations sell believe it or not. I won't get into specifics, but my better selling images are not even from California. One reason is that I haven't really photographed the touristy stuff here.

So today I went to Hollywood! Not courtesy of Randy, Paula and Simon I might add... anyways. When I was younger, my impression of Hollywood was more along the lines of Frederick's of Hollywood than a place you'd want to take out-of-town visitors to. I hadn't been down there since I moved back to So Cal so I was pleasantly surprised to find the area around the theater is much cleaner now than it used to be due to the development of the Hollywood & Highland complex, which also is home to the Kodak Theatre.

For postcard rack type of images from the Chinese Theatre, I think a sunrise shoot on a Sunday morning would probably be your best bet. There are a lot of people roaming around during the day and a lot of traffic passing by on Hollywood Blvd. which blocks the view. A tilt and shift lens would be beneficial as well because the theater is quite tall and you get perspective distortion with a regular lens from having to aim upwards.

Sometimes it's kinda cool to incorporate people and traffic into the scene as well especially if you can't avoid it, but it has to look deliberate. There certainly was no shortage of that today.

Photography Videos

Scroll down a few blog entries and you might have noticed the photography videos I've been making. Well now I created a gallery specifically for the videos. They can be accessed within one click off my homepage now. www.rwongphoto.com

And here is the new video gallery page: Photography Videos

More on Photoshelter Archive, Bandwidth Costs and Other Stuff Only Web Geek Photographers Would Enjoy

Last summer I wrote about upgrading my website with a photo search feature and weighed the pros & cons of going with PhotoShelter Archive, Digital Railroad, or Lightbox Photo. After reading Ron Niebrugge's blog post today about high server bandwidth costs, "I could make payments on a very fancy car for what this thing will cost.", I figured I would revisit the topic again.

Correct me if I'm wrong on the technical details - Ron uses Lightbox Photo software for his image search feature and hosts his images on his web server. His site has well over 5,000 images and is receiving in excess of 300,000 visitors per month to his website. Content = website crawlers = traffic = $$.

At this time last year, I was contemplating going with a similar approach for my own site using the same setup. Lightbox Photo is software you purchase and need a database server on your site to run. It would have cost about $1,000 to get the features that I wanted. Other than the price tag, one concern of mine was how much re-occurring costs in bandwidth and storage space to host all the images that I wanted to put on there. I had no idea what that amount would be, but Ron's experience has probably answered that question.

PhotoShelter on the other hand costs around $30/month for 35gb of space to store files without restrictions on bandwidth usage. With PhotoShelter while I don't own any of the infrastructure nor have my own rwongphoto.com URL for the photo archive, I know how much I will be paying in re-occurring costs and have control over that with their pricing plans. I currently have 5,300 image files uploaded to my archive, (not all visible), and have a feeling that if I were to host all those images on my own server it would cost significantly more than $30/month.

One could use PhotoShelter Archive in many different ways. For my own purposes, I place the "search archive" box on each page on my website so if someone needs to find more images then they could easily look for what they need. My site gets tens of thousands of visitors per month so I figure that even if 5% of people who visit my site use that feature then that's still enough traffic to make it worthwhile. Though I haven't sold anything from the archive yet without direct involvement in the process, it is still an amazing tool for distribution. It saves people time by giving them the opportunity to find exactly what they want and even price an image before contacting me.

Another way I have used it is if someone calls or emails me with a Photo ID# then I could instantly type it in and know what they're asking for. It also saves me from having to carry around an external hard drive. If I need to make a quick submission, (not something I do enough of), then I could generate a lightbox online and email it within minutes.

For example, a photo editor found me from a photo agency I am with and called to ask if I had certain images. I did a photo search on my site while on the phone and told her what I found then directed her to my website as well and looked it up herself. They turned out to be the same images that she had already seen but at least it only took a few seconds to come to that conclusion. I was at my freelance job that day and didn't have my external drive around, so if my images weren't already online and easily searchable, then I would have had to gather those images together later that night from my computer, create a gallery for them on my regular website and email the link to the editor or I would have had to email low-res jpegs to her. By that point, the editor probably would have already contacted someone else or forgotten who I was. She ended up licensing my image through the photo agency afterwards so despite not making a direct sale, I didn't lose a sale either.

Which brings me to my next topic; time. To update my website, it usually takes a few minutes to get all the HTML coded, placed and re-arranged. That's all fine and expected, but when you need something online ASAP it is very easy to just upload to PhotoShelter then click a few options to make them available online. Once I shot a scenic landscape image on Saturday, processed it on Sunday, uploaded it to my archive that afternoon and by Tuesday a buyer called to license it. For photojournalists, wedding photographers, event shooters, etc... having images up ASAP is essential. The quick sale of that image just happened by coincidence for me but it does show how important it is to have your photos available online and easily searchable, not just sitting on the hard drive collecting dust.

Windy Day at the Poppy Reserve Time Lapse Video

Since it's often difficult to portray wind effectively in still photography, I thought it might be cool to show how windy it was at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve via a time lapse video.

Windy Day at the Poppy Reserve Time Lapse Video

To make this video, I took 14 images and put them into slide show software with a .05 sec duration for each frame. I then looped the 14 images about 10 times or so to get this 10 second clip. I tried to put this on YouTube but their web compression is so severe that there was no fine detail left in the video after uploading it. This isn't much better but at least they're identifiable as flowers. :-)

Portraits, Arlington West Memorial

Picture: Portraits of American Military Casualties in Iraq War, Arlington West Memorial at Santa Monica, California

There are soldiers everywhere at Arlington West - pictures on the crosses. Pictures on boards. Lists of names from Iraq and Afghanistan. Combat boots. Helmets. The American flag.

U.S. Flag Flying Over Arlington West

Photo: U.S. Flag and Crosses at Arlington West Memorial, Santa Monica, California

This makeshift cemetery has been set up on the north side of the Santa Monica Pier each Sunday since February 15, 2004. As the death toll in Iraq rises, the Veterans for Peace organization has started to use a number of red crosses to symbolize 10 soldiers killed in action. Previously, there was a white cross for each death but the toll is so high now that it would take up most of the beach.

I have previously photographed four anti-war rallies and those were bursting with energy. However, the Arlington West Memorial is the most introspective demonstration that I have witnessed to date. There is no need to scream at people here demanding for justice. The work speaks for itself.

Arlington West Memorial, Santa Monica

Picture: Tally of American Military Killed and Wounded in Iraq War at Arlington West Memorial, Santa Monica, California

Vasquez Rocks

Photo of Vasquez Rocks County Park, Agua Dulce, California

Vasquez Rocks has one of the more interesting landscapes that I have seen in Southern California. Commuters on Highway 14 probably see this landscape on a daily basis as well, as I'm sure they've had time to being stuck in LA's miserable weekday commute. I discovered this place through my cousin Herbert. Over a year ago, we were talking about Red Rock Canyon and he told me I should check out the Vasquez Rocks on the way out there. Well I never got around to visiting this place until the other day while coming back from the Poppy Reserve. The park closes before sunset, so the light in this photo isn't doing the landscape any justice but it's pretty cool to walk around on top of the rock formations.

The name "Vasquez" comes from a bandit named Tiburcio Vasquez. In the 1870's, he used the rocks to hide himself from law enforcement. The Vasquez Rocks is also a famous movie-making site. Two Star Trek movies along with the TV series have been filmed here as well as a ton of other big name movies, shows and music videos. Check out the Wikipedia entry for the rest of the list - Vasquez Rocks.

Antelope Valley Golden Poppies Blowing in the Wind

Picture of Heavy Wind-Blown Golden Poppies, Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, California

It's hard to see in this little blog photo, but none of the golden poppies were open. They were blowing to the right almost touching the ground because it was so windy.

Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve

Goldfields and Golden Poppies, Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, California

This is a good year to visit the poppy reserve. I also went in 2002 and 2005, but it is definitely better this year than those other years. Most of the flowers are located inside of the reserve, on the road just to the east of the reserve, and a large carpet along the northern boundary. There wasn't a lot of diversity of flowers, mainly I saw goldfields and poppies but there were a lot of those.

The weather was less than ideal though because it was extremely windy. Antelope Valley is one of the windiest locations in California so that was not a surprise. Surprisingly though, I was able to get sharp photos and it looked kinda cool to have my poppies flopping off to the side. The flowers are so colorful and so abundant that it is nearly impossible to take bad pictures here no matter what the weather is like.

The drawback is that there were a lot of people there. People trampling the flowers by stepping off the trails and kids running into people like it was an arcade pinball machine at Barnum & Bailey's. I overheard one lady complaining to a ranger that the reserve is located in the middle of nowhere. The ranger responded, "yes, and that's the best part about it!" If people want Disneyland then go to Disneyland. There's nothing wrong with that, but leave the state parks to people who want to experience nature without interference from housing developments, corporate interests and power lines. As is, a few miles away there is a state prison and housing developments starting to pop up around the perimeter of the reserve. :-(

My First YouTube Video - Landscape Photography Slideshow

I've always wanted to use the song, "California" by Phantom Planet for a photo slide show along with my tenor sax rendition of "Blue Moon" but licensing music tends to be difficult for small fish like myself so I took it upon myself to scribble down a few chord changes and then record my own background track last night. I picked up an effects pedal from Guitar Center the other day and recorded this while plugged directly into the computer. I'm still trying to figure out how to cut out the silent part at the beginning so I apologize in advance.

The images got too compressed for my tastes after uploading to YouTube so I'll give it another shot some other day and see if anything can be done about that. In the meantime I'll work on generating some more tracks for the slide shows... :-p

Big Falls, Southern California's Tallest Waterfall

Photo of Big Falls, San Bernardino National Forest, California

Today I went photograph Southern California's tallest waterfall. The best part is that Big Falls is pretty easy to get to. It's only a few miles into the mountains above Redlands. The not so good part is that it is very difficult to photograph. There is no one location where you can see the entire 400+ foot waterfall and the 240 ft. upper tier seen here is out of reach to all but the most suicidal of people. I had to use a 70-300 zoom lens to get this image.

There are a lot of "smaller" photographic opportunities though because there are numerous waterfalls running down Mill Creek. Even though it was hard to get a good view of the falls, it was still exciting. You can feel the water roaring even while standing on gravel and the air is cold and crisp up there. (Today it was 35 degrees and had a few snow flakes falling.)

Cats

Picture: Orange Cat

I like cats. I think they're funny. I can't own them though because I am allergic to cat fur. So having a stray hangout in my backyard is the next best thing! I don't know the cat's real name so her new name is "Orangeade." It pretty much spends all day in my yard so I give it food and water.

Photo: Orange Cat Scratching on Wooden Bench

Why did I post these photos? On A Photo Editor's blog, he posted an interview today of a photographer, Chip Simons who struck it rich twenty years ago for his low-angled, gelled-strobe cat portraits. The guy is bitter now because he is broke and blames digital among other things (ex-wife, New Mexico, Getty, etc...) for his downfall. He also thinks too many people copied him. Well I was too lazy to dig my colored diffusers out of the closet... Whatever.

Green Not Brown

Picture: Lupine and Mustard Wildflowers, San Gabriel Mountains, California

There are a series of hills at the top of my street and once you get to the first ridge of the trail, you can get great views of the San Gabriel Mountains and valley. I have never seen it so green around here. Even without flowers, it would be very pretty. I didn't hike up to the top of the hills because dark thunderstorms were hovering in the area, but it was still a nice walk.

It's good to get out and enjoy nature's special moments while they happen because for the rest of the year it is brown in Southern California.