I've been away from photographica for a while, but noticed that story thumbnails aren't showing up on the home page. ...

Is this a setting I can control, or is cory tinkering?

Yesterday, my lovely wife and I went on a short road-trip excursion to the towns of Ojai and Santa Barbara.

We took the scenic view of the Ojai Valley, after stopping in town to see the local architecture, including the
Ojai Post Office  along with some galleries, shops, etc. Throughout the town are these beautiful Jacaranda  trees.  

After a couple of hours in town, we got back into the car and headed up the highway to  Santa Barbara.  First, we stopped at Mission Santa Barbara (plaque)  founded by Father ("Padre")Sera  

I couldn't help noticing the contrasting textures in these shots.  Especially the Ojai Valley shot, "Mission", and "Padre"
 

I just received a very interesting email about the Leica camera company's efforts to save its employees from the Holocaust.  

It's  a bit long to post here, but a worthwhile read.  (shouldn't take more than a minute or two to look at)

I've put it  up at http://www.firemark.net/lft.html

Yesterday, I visited the neighborhood where i grew up at just before sunset.  

So, I decided to try shooting a few shots for the "thirds" theme.  I bracketed exposure all over the map, and came up with a one  or two nice shots

This lighthouse is kinda cool,  and here's another that uses the rule of thirds (after some cropping).

Last night, I helped with the sound for a young country singer by the name of               Boomer McClennan.    Boomer's got a website at www.BoomerM.com

Boomer's a classy guy, and a terrific performer.  I had lots of time on my hands once things got going so I took  some photos.    I'd love to hear what you think.  These are straight from the camera, reduced to 800 pixels wide.  No sharpening, etc. (I've not had the time).  I shot hand-held, at ISO 1600, with Available light (mostly).

1450   1455   1456   1457   1458  1460   1461   1462   1463   1464   1473    1474    1480   1481   1483   1485   1486  
Here's a control-room's eye view of The Whole Room, and here are a couple of the younger Fans

Last Saturday, my lovely wife, Cassandra and I went to the Los Angeles County Fair.  Fair Photos sign

I had it in my mind to find some images of Music , but Cassandra had other ideas

RANT ON ANOTHER SUBJECT FOLLOWS
This photo IRONYis from another day.. .taken in a local mall.  A few moments later, I was accosted by mall security demanding that I stop photographing "the structure"... (apparently some fear of terrorists using photos to 'case' the joint.)  Really, if I were a terrorist, I'd use a camera phone, surreptitiously, not a DSLR, with Flash.  

Geez.. aren't our freedoms being encroached just a bit too much these days?

Well, they were taken BEFORE the current theme was announced, at my wedding, (by my best man and others) but here's the essence of what MUSIC is to me.

First...My Muse .  Cassandra. She is my Sun, my Moon, and all the stars in the sky, and when she's near, there's music playing.

My
Best Man Bob, is a professional musician, and agreed to have his band,  The Bob Marino Little Big Band , ((another angle)   perform at my wedding... which is not their usual kind of gig.

Tom  is Bob's brother, and also a professional.  He was kind enough to play for our processional and recessional.

But for me, the picture that says it all is  me crooning to my new wife during the reception. (I'd never sung in public before that day).

"It had to be you
It had to be you
I wandered around
and finally found
somebody who
Could make me be true
Could make me feel blue
or even be glad
just to be sad
thinking of you...."

As you can see, music plays a big role in my life.

Off to the L.A. County fair today... I'm sure I'll find more musical imagery there!

Stay tuned!

Lots of folks seem to be having trouble with the Gallery feature, so as I service to all, I thought I'd create this brief tutorial.  I hope it helps.

Creating a Gallery is very easy, and incorporating a Gallery into a Story is no more difficult than adding photos... except that you have to manually type the code.

Here are the steps.

1. Upload photos as you would for any other purpose.

2. Click "Create New Gallery", and you'll be transported to a screen that looks LIKE THIS

3. Give your Gallery a Title and a Keyword
   REMEMBER THIS KEYWORD... IT WILL NOT SHOW ANYWHERE LATER

4. Change the colors of the background and text in the boxes shown
   (default is white text on black background)

5. In the left column, select the keyword of each photo you want to include in the Gallery.

   NOTE:  Photos can be no more than 750px wide, or 560 high, or they won't show up in the pulldown  
   (This is about as large as you'd want to go for most images on this site anyway)

   note that the keyword pulldown may appear "lower" on the screen than the corresponding number and description fields..  don't worry about this.

6. In the right-hand column, enter a brief description, which will appear below the photo.

7. Continue as above to add up to 20 photos to the gallery

8. <Click "Submit">, and you've created the gallery.
   

Of course until you plug your gallery into a story, it won't be visible anywhere.  

--------------------------------------

Now, create a new story:

1. Click "Post New Story"

2. write your story text

3. Insert your gallery as you would for a popup, but change the tag "[popup] to [Gallery], and using the Gallery's keyword you memorized in step 3 above.

   So,  for example, this demo gallery uses the syntax:
   
   [gallery keyword="GalleryDemo"] demo gallery [/gallery]
   
   (where brackets [  and ] are really < and > symbols, respectively)

4. preview your story by clicking "preview", and when ready,

5. click "Submit"... and your story is posted to the site.
   

I hope this helps.... let's see some amazing galleries.

Just a few ideas that came to me while reading the site(s) today.

Shouldn't we have some of these?

asparagraphica
kittygraphica
Pornographica (too easy?)
erotographica (still easy)
assgraphica  (**NSFW**)
graphigraphica
chronographica
 smart-aleckographica

Today, just around the corner from my home, a churchyard had this fitting tribute , which made me smile.

 

 Flags 2

 Flags 3

 Flags 4

 Flags 5

Well, yesterday, after being rear-ended on the way to the concert (about 100 miles from home), We finally arrived during the sound check.

During rehearsal, I took this one of Singer Gloria Loring with bandleader    Gary Tole.  

Gary's a top-flight trombone player and band leader.  He's a client of mine, as is my long-time best friend (since 5th grade) Drummer, Bob Marino.

After rehearsal, a picnic, then at 6:30... here they are, ladies and gentlemen... Gary Tole and the Legends of Swing.  This concert was a bill consiting mostly of  Count Basie and Duke Ellington tunes.  On keyboards, another friend from school days, Bob Remstein.

Also in this band, another friend
Al Yankee on Sax

The show was off to a great start, so Gary found his way down to the sound-board to do some fine-tuning.
Sounds good... Sounds great... Sounds Perfect!

Al  really can swing.

Gary enjoys his work...here, he's the Maestro.

I took a walk around, and managed to get The classic concert shot.  Also got this one, and this one, of Gary really swingin',
 and on trombone, too!

The band played past sunset, and into the night, but as the sun went down, it became clear that the stage lighting was fairly dim, so holding the 300mm, even at f4 and w monopod, was going to be a challenge.  So after snappingthis last one, I put away the camera and enjoyed the music.

The rented 300mm was great, I loved the compressed depth-of-field, and on my camera, with its 1.6 image size factor, the 300 is like 480.  That's Loooong.  (Which means camera shake is very noticeable)  It was nice to try at a $20 rental rate, but I won't be buying this $1400 lens anytime soon.

Critique welcome!

I've got my old Minolta Maxxum 9000 sitting here... there's the body, a 50mm f1.7, a Sigma 80-200mm f4 Zoom, Minolta ttl flash, and an auto-winder AW-90

It's all for sale..

A great 35mm camera rig that served me well for years. (I bought this in 1988)

PM me if interested.

The other night, as I pulled into my garage, I noticed this guy(the ball hangs on a string to prevent me pulling in too far).  He stayed there even when I bumped the ball with my windshield. He didn't budge. (Maybe you'd say he's not "on the ball")  The Flash finally prompted him to fly away.  

Today, I rented a nice 300mm f4 for a concert I'm going to tomorrow.  Folling around with it in the office, I got this   Guess things need some dusting around here.

For this week's assignment, I took  my camera to the grocery store... people thought I was really wierd (and they're right), but I came up with this Close Up Gallery.

Not 'Macro'... just close ups.

No photos in this post, but if anybody's interested, I'll see about organizing something interesting for an L.A. area get-together over Labor Day Weekend.

Anybody who's interested, PM me, and I'll gauge the interest.

-Cheers