Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images

According to some, it has the potential to show us the mind of God, or if the fear-mongers are correct, deliver the entire planet to God. The Boston Globe’s photo-blog, The Big Picture, has recently run an awesome collection of images from the Large Hadron Collider. This machine has been built to replicate the earliest conditions in the universe, immediately following the big bang. The goal is to learn more about the very basic structure and nature of the universe, including proving the possible existence of extra dimensions of space. The photos are amazing, but pale in contrast when you consider the scope of technology and science used to build this machine.

A few other recent notable image collections from the Big Picture:
Recent Volcanic Activity
California’s Forest Fires
Views of Jupiter

Picture: Spray from waves crashing on coastal rocks at sunset along the Lost Coast at Shelter Cove, Humboldt County, California

It always feels like a reason to celebrate when I get through processing a bunch of RAW images from a recent trip. Last night, I finished processing the images from my trip to the Northern California Coast, specifically Humboldt & Del Norte Counties. The final total was 657 RAW images were processed, cleaned, sized, and spotted, and are now ready the next phase.

I often get asked how I deal with so many images, and I’ve thought about writing this out in more detail. But for now, when shooting for stock, you do have to play a bit of a numbers game. Compound that with shooting for a book project, and you wind up with lots and lots of photos. However, just because I processed all of these images doesn’t mean that each image will get further down the production path. Some ’similars’ may be marked as seconds, like film, where the files simply live on a hard disk or DVD as a type of back-up file, or kept just in case a future stock request requires a certain slight variation. A few images will get tossed, meaning that after a while of looking at them, I decide they just don’t meet critical muster. So out of those 657 images, I’m willing to guess that somewhere between 400 & 500 images will actually get fitted into submissions for my stock agencies.

Looking back, I think it took close to three weeks to process all those photos. Now it’s on to start processing images from my recent Southern California trip. Hoo-Ya!

PS: You can see more of my older North Coast Photos in my online web gallery

Picture: Some big ugly flaw on my sensor after the camera hits the ground.

So there I am, standing along the bank of the Eel River in Humboldt County. I was close to wrapping up my trip along that section of the coast, and was shooting the Avenue of the Giants. My camera was on the tripod when I went to change lenses. My camera bag was a couple feet away, so I dismounted the lens that was attached to the body, and carried it to my camera bag. As I reached my bag, I heard behind me the sickening sound of a whack-thud. The wind had blown over the tripod and camera body, which had a gapping hole where a lens should have been attached. The Gods had been kind in that the camera fell with the lens mount face up, and the back of my camera taking the full force of the impact with the dirty, dusty, gravel-laiden ground. With my heart wrapped around my feet, and my stomach near my throat, I walked over and looked down at the camera. I could see the mirror appeared half open and could see the sensor behind it. I was sure my trip just ended in that moment.

There was only one thing to do; Test the camera. I put the lens on, turned on the camera, said a prayer, and clicked the shutter. The camera took the picture, but what showed up on my preview LCD panel was the big black disgusting looking flaw that you see above. My camera was toast. I was sure of it. Nonetheless, I took the camera back to my truck, and began to clean the sensor to see just how bad the damage was. What transpired was that after the first cleaning, the big black ugly flaw had gone away, but some spots remained. So I then proceeded to swab the sensor, and eventually everything was cleaned and working normally.

When I uploaded this CF card to my laptop, I realized what this big black flaw had been. While my camera had been laying on the ground, apparently a hatch fly had flown into the camera. So what I first thought was massive damage to my camera just turned out to be some very unplanned, extreme close-up insect photography.

Picture: Evening light over waves and rocks on sand beach at the Historic District of Crystal Cove State Park, Newport Beach, Orange County coast, California

I just returned from a nine day trip to the Southern California Coast, specifically to areas of San Diego and Orange Counties. This was an unusual trip, in that I returned much more rested than usual. Thanks to a number of mornings of gray clouds known locally as June Gloom, I was able to wake up at 5:15 am, and realize I could go back to sleep for another couple hours.

Oddly enough, my favorite shot(s) from this trip were the last photos I took, and had nothing to do with my current book project. I’ll post those a bit later. But for now, I really liked this evening shot of the coast, where you are able to rent rustic cabins on the ‘original’ OC, an area famous from the 1940’s & 50’s.

You can also see more of my other LA & Orange County coast photos in my online web gallery.

Picture: Mountain bikers on trail through Los Penasquitos Open Space Preserve, San Diego, California

I’ve been enjoying my time in San Diego for a very odd reason. The weather continues to be stuck in an early summer “June Gloom” rut. This means that there is a thick blanket of coastal fog that rolls in and obscures any chance of a nice sunrise. Why do I like that? Well, because it allows me to get some extra sleep every morning. You see, good weather can make for some very exhausting trips. The counter balance to this means that you only get one shot at good light per day. Yesterday, my shot came while taking a late afternoon hike through a seven mile strip of land called the Los Penasquitos Open Space Preserve. It’s a really nice refuge from the crowded hills filled with houses, shopping malls, and office building. Everyone needs a place to escape, and if you’re a local here, this Preserve is the perfect place.

You can see more of my San Diego area photos in my online web gallery.

Isn’t that what you’re tempted to ask when you see someone you think you recognize, but you’re not sure from when or where? “Hey, Don’t I know you from somewhere?” In fact, now that I think about it, that would make a great pick-up line at a bar. (Yes, I have used it at a bar before & yes, it turns out I did know her previously.)

But now, photo-savy people may see a ‘famous’ face strolling the streets of Berkeley & Emeryville. It seems the Everywhere girl is moving to attend school at UC Berkeley. Who is the Everywhere girl you ask?

About her famous photo shoot, she says,

Of course if I had known what a huge deal these photos would become I may have felt different about the amount I was getting paid. It was a stock photo shoot and royalty-free, which I really didn’t understand at the time…

I’ll bet she understands all this stuff pretty well by now.

You can see more of the Everywhere Girl on my Royalty Free Page

Picture: Cast of Bigfoot foot, on display at the Bigfoot Museum, Willow Creek, California

I can’t say I’m a true believer that there are families of Bigfeet walking around the forests of the Western United States. However, while working on my current book project, I thought it might be fun to take a detour of the Humboldt County coast, and go see the Bigfoot Museum. Trust me, the Smithsonian it isn’t. But it was fun to see the various foot casts in person, and see all the books an posters related to the Bigfoot legend.

But this post also signifies a Big Step for me as well. Since the end of my last trip four weeks ago, I’ve done little else than process images. In this period of time, I’ve processed over 1300 images; (452) 35mm slide scans from Humboldt & Del Norte County, (358) RAW images (& counting) from my latest trip to Humboldt & Del Norte County - the above image included, and (545) RAW images from the Central Coast & Santa Barbara. Ugh.

When people say how cool of a job being a photographer must be, this is what I explain is the flip side of the coin, spending full day and nights up ’til 1:00am night after night processing images. Fun? No. Work? You better believe it! I’m ready for a break from the screwy computer.

I received a gift from the techno-gods. It’s a gift I had hoped for, asked for, but never expected to actually happen.

I recently talked about the recent server migration my host made me go through. I’d been putting the migration off for well over a year, waiting for them to work out some bugs. I was also procrastinating because the move, as described to me, would require me to change a URL on almost 2000 static html pages.

Basically, my order form used to live (pre-migration) at the URL “https://st05.startlogic…”. When my web host said the server st05 was going to have it’s plug pulled, I was forced to undergo the migration or risk the loss of my website.

The other night I figured I might as well start working on replacing the Order Form URL to point to the the new server. To my astonishment, every single html page had the Order Form URL already changed. Apparently, some tech-guru somewhere had the forethought to write in a search and replace code. Throughout my web domain, wherever I had a URL that pointed to “st05″ server, the host computer re-wrote all of my html pages to replace that with the new server address.

Hallelujah! Saved from many hours of very tedious work. Thank you, tech-gods.
Now I’ve got more time to tend to my other very tedious work.

Picture: Pickup truck driving on a long straight rolling hills country road at sunrise, near Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County, California

Sometimes you just have a feeling about a photo as you’re taking the shot. For instance, knowing it would make for a perfect cover photo.

Cover photos are usually not the perfect composition you’d normally see as a print on a wall. Often publishers will want extra negative (blank) space at the top of the frame to accomodate their title. Magazines also like the primary subject to be near the center or slightly higher, so the subject will still be visible when sitting in an upright magazine rack. They also like some extra room to put the text of what will be featured that month, or some kind of lead in slug that will make you want to find out more about what’s inside.

Click here to see a perfect example.

Picture: Cub greeting mother Black Bear as she returns to the den.

I know - I can’t belive how lucky I was to photograph this scene while in the Ojai Valley back in May. I mean seriously, they opened up the Museum just for me so I could take a few pictures.