The Venice Beach Photography Series Continued

If you've ever thought about taking candid street photographs, Venice Beach is the place.  You never know what you may see there.  This photograph said it perfectly (Venice Beach - Have a Strange Day):

There are three ways (or situations) I shoot photos of people at Venice Beach:  by asking them, not asking them and they are not aware of being photographed, and they are not aware I'm going to take their photo, but then they catch me doing it.  The problem with asking is once they know they are going to be photographed, assuming they agree, they are no longer candid.  Of course, on the other hand, if we relate well with each other, I may get some really great expressions.  So sometimes I'll do a combination - shoot a candid or two, then ask and if they agree, shoot some more.  I always offer to send them copies of the photos for free when I ask and they agree.  If I post a photo, say to FB, and the person in the photo doesn't want it there, I will delete it.  The following shots were all of people who I didn't ask, but who caught me shooting them - you can tell by their expressions.

One of my favorites of the surprise photos. 

Another favorite because she looks like she's having a great time. 

Saw this young lady just as she is here.  Back in the days of phone booths.   We got into a short conversation - short because she was on a long distance call back in the days when people had to pay extra for those.

Never found out who xxxTina was, but thought it was a cute photo.

A much more recent photo series from three years ago was shot at the paddle tennis courts.  Maria Sharipova was eliminated at Indian Wells and came down to Venice Beach to play some paddle tennis in 2014.  Shot very close to the fence for these.

Hope you enjoy these posts.  I think it might be more interesting to mix up my posts on different subjects related to photography (and some on health, too).  But if I can't think of anything else, I will have lot of photos to post of Venice Beach for the past 37 years or so, plus a few of Hermosa Beach, Santa Monica, and other beach areas.

Every Body Should Have an Owners Manual

If you buy a new car, it will come with an owners manual.  New appliances, computers, cameras all come with manuals on how to use them.  They'll tell you what you need to do to avoid causing damage to the item and how to correctly use them for the longest life.  Wouldn't it be nice if humans came with one of these manuals?  One that was divided into years so you knew at each step in life how to stay healthy, what you should eat, and what you should avoid.

It's funny how people treat their cars with loving care but treat themselves terribly.  We've evolved over millions of years, our bodies built with the clean foods that were available all those years as we were fed by nature.  Then for some weird reason, people thought they could do better.  We learned about diseases and how to prevent them, and now ignore what we have learned.  So what do people do?  Instead of getting back to nature, eating healthy foods, adding supplements because our foods don't have the nutrients they should anymore, and getting exercise, etc., it seems they would rather eat chemical laden foods, take drugs, and complain about so-called health care (which is really Sick-care).  Wouldn't it be much better to say, "I don't need no stinkin' healthcare because I'm healthy?"

You probably can if you just had an owners manual for your body, and you and your children followed it.  I say probably because you may have a genetic condition, you may have been exposed to heavy metals, toxins, and other contaminants in your environment that may be causing havoc on your system, etc.  What would be in the owner's manual?  What foods to eat, what non-foods to avoid and never eat, what supplements you can take for general health and also for specific problems, why you should avoid vaccines until they really do work and are actually safe (if that will ever happen).  Also, proper exercise, how to avoid stress, and more.

Think for a minute how much money you would save by being and staying healthy.  Then think of all the pain and suffering you wouldn't have.  If these things don't give you the motivation to follow healthy guidelines, what will?  Perhaps visiting those in the hospital?  If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, don't you think it's time for a change?  Wouldn't it be great not to have to think about Obamacare or Trumpcare (maybe they should be called Obamascare and Trumpscare, LOL)?

I've seen lots of pain and suffering from health problems in my family, with friends, on FB and in the news.  Not to mention my own in the distant past.  The perfect time to start a healthy lifestyle is now.  I started many years ago and got rid of headaches, stomach aches, indigestion, IBS, colds, flu, pretty severe allergies, etc.  If I hadn't changed, who knows what condition I would be in now, assuming I survived.

Maybe I'll write the manual, but until then, all you need to do is go to Google, search independent sources (not those affiliated in any way with the drug companies, the media, food companies, government agencies, chemical companies, etc.) for healthy living.  Keep in mind that each person has a unique biochemical makeup, so what works for me may be different than what works for you.  You may not be able to eat foods with gluten, you may have a nut allergy, you may need a different variety of supplements, etc.  There will be some trial and error until you find what works best for you.  But once you find it, you will be a happy camper.

Whenever you hear about a health related problem in the media, they'll mention a promising new drug, or they'll be advertising an old one.  What you NEVER hear is that by changing your diet to healthy foods and taking supplements that work better than any drug and without side effects, your problem will most likely resolve itself.  No money in that.  It worked for me.  This evening in LA, with the high rainfall totals this past Winter, and today's high winds, they said in the news that allergies are a major problem right now.  I say what allergies?  Thanks to a healthy diet and supplements, no more allergies.  They say for this or that condition, take a drug that can have serious side effects up to and including death.  And you may need another drug to counteract the side effects of the first one.  I say I don't need no stinkin' drugs because I got rid of the problems naturally.  Much cheaper and no side effects from healthy foods and supplements.  I live by what I think would be in a human's owner manual if there was one.

The really nice thing about a healthy diet and supplements that you take for one problem?  Lots of other health problems may also disappear, as opposed to drugs which will probably cause a lot of other health problems.  Many people don't even realize the drug is the cause of their new health problems.  Very sad!

I wish you all good health and happiness.

Venice Beach Photos - a New Ongoing Series (1980 - Unknown)

I've been going to Venice Beach, CA since around 1980.  From 1980 to around 2008, I roller skated Venice to Santa Monica, and sometimes to Redondo Beach and back.  I always carried my camera with me, which until around 2000 or so was a Nikon film camera.  I shot probably thousands of photos.  Don't forget, with film you could shoot B&W or color film.  B&W was less expensive so shot many photos this way, and usually processed and printed my own film.  With digital, there is no difference in cost to shoot in color or B&W, and it is easy to convert color to 50 shades of B&W or more (I know, but I had to make that reference, LOL).  Everything I shoot is now in color as I shoot only digital.

A little more about the transition from film to digital, at least as it relates to my photography.  When I was shooting with film with the Nikon, everything was in manual mode - manual focus, manual exposure, manual ASA (now called ISO) determined by the film you would be using.  The camera did have a built in light meter to verify that the exposure was correct, but sometimes, shooting under rapidly changing conditions and wanting to get the photo, exposures were off.  Sometimes when changing film from one ASA to another, I forgot to set the light meter.  Oops.  There was very little latitude with color film.  If I knew I had made a mistake with B&W, I could somewhat compensate during developing.  That is no longer a problem with digital.  I almost always shoot my walk around images in aperture priority mode with the same ISO, and in RAW mode which gives a bit more latitude than JPG.  With the focus on the Nikon - if I had removed my glasses, the focus might be off.  Or if the subject moved closer or further away.  That problem is also gone for many cameras, although some cameras might have a problem with this.  These days, almost all my exposures are accurate and well focused.  With that said, some of my photos through the year 2000 may not all be perfect, due to the above problems, but I am posting those that I think may be of interest.  Some photos have faded or color shifted with time (another problem gone with digital), and some may have dust spots from the film or the scanning, and with thousands of photos, didn't have time to remove all those spots.  The digital photos will be much cleaner with more accurate colors, too.

Many of the photos have been of movie sets and celebrities at Venice Beach and I will start with those photos here.

With that out of the way, here are the first of the series:

Harry Dean Stanton skating near the old Venice Pavilion and Slalom - probably early 1980s. 

The above three photos are of Playmate Hope Carlton, Photographed during a film being shot at Venice Beach sometime in the 1980s.  The girl getting shot by Hope works at Venice Beach.

The above four photos are of Jana (one with me in it, too) - I met her while doing pictures with Reagan at Venice Beach in the early 1980s.  I used to tell her she should become a model.  I don't know if that's why she became a model, but she became a very successful supermodel regardless and was always a wonderful person.  As you can see from the photo just above, she was a few inches taller than I was.

And finally, I will end this post with Michael Landon.  The bottom photo was shot during a scene they were filming.  The top one was after the filming went on a break and I asked him if I could get a close-up of him.  He said yes, but that he was going to keep walking.  I was skating backward for this shot, which is why the smile on his face.  I don't think he expected that.

Hope you enjoy this series.  Following the movie theme, you will see everyday beach life from around 1980 at Venice Beach.  Many things have changed, many have not.

Stay Healthy or Use Healthcare? Which is Better?

I wish everyone was healthy and didn't need any kind o care.  Well, most people could say that if they would eat a healthy diet, get regular exercise, take the right supplements. get a good nights sleep, and avoid stress.  Growing up, I never believed I would be able to say that.  But after 30 years of catching every cold, flu, and virus going around four or more times a year, and having had an ulcer, IBS, allergies, etc., I changed my diet and studied health and now I can say it.  Although I have VA healthcare (I'm a veteran), I've only used it for athletic injuries a couple of times.

Keep in mind that what is called healthcare really isn't "health" care - if you were healthy, you wouldn't need care.  What it is is "sick care."  Drug companies don't want you to be healthy - they would go out of business.  Same for many doctors.  People are worried about research funds being cut for cancer.  They should be more worried about not having access to alternative treatments that might actually work...and cost very little.  Cancer has been researched since before the 1950s.  The result is that cancer rates, when smokers are factored out, are higher than ever, with childhood cancers increasing.  The below summary about cancer is from an article here (should you wish to read the whole article).

"In this interview, Travis Christofferson, author of "Tripping Over the Truth: The Return of the Metabolic Theory of Cancer," and Dr. Abdul Kadir Slocum from the ChemoThermia Oncology Center in Turkey.  They present data from one of the first studies documenting the effectiveness of metabolic therapies and nutritional ketosis in the treatment of advanced stages of cancer.  "I'm very excited for this data to be presented," Christofferson says. "[Cancer] diagnosis has gone up from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 and is heading toward 1 in 2 ... It's set to surpass heart disease as the No. 1 killer in the Western world by 2020 …  We've been treating this disease a long time. Nixon signed the Cancer Act in 1971 … Radiation and surgery have been around for over 100 years. Cytotoxic chemotherapy was developed right after World War II. [Yet] death rates from treatment have barely budged since the 1950s."  In 2014, no cancer drug was approved costing less than $100,000 for a course treatment.
In 2015, eight drugs were approved that cost over $120,000 each for a course of treatment. As noted by Christofferson, this trajectory will eventually bankrupt the health care system. Adding insult to injury, these drugs have marginal efficacy at best.  Consider Tarceva, for example. This cancer drug was approved about 10 years ago. It has significant side effects, it's expensive, and boosts median survival for pancreatic cancer patients by a mere 10 DAYS!"

There was a new cholesterol drug on the news a few days ago.  They said, as if it was a good thing, that the company who makes it paid for the study.  I have my doubts about any study that is funded by the ones who make the drug.  What happens if your cholesterol levels get too low?  I remember a report from many years ago linking too low cholesterol to cancer.  Here is a link to some more information about cholesterol.  The point is that if you take care of yourself, you should never have to think of taking this or any other drug.  It is possible you may still get sick due to environmental pollution and toxins including vaccines, or genetics, but even some of those problems may be minimized by a healthy diet and the right supplements.

What should a healthy diet have and not have?  It should have a variety of foods that actually grow.  They should be organic when possible, as nature made them.  They should not have chemicals, pesticides, food coloring, sugar, fructose, artificial anything, MSG, anything processed, etc.  Your diet should include a good multivitamin in case you don't get the nutrients and variety you need in your diet, as well as supplements that support your immune system.  If you have specific problems, then supplement for those problems, too.  Unlike drugs, side effects from supplements are practically non-existent.  Doing this has worked for me.  A friend has said to me a few times, "why bother with all the healthy stuff, you're going to die anyway at some point."  That's true, but would you rather live a healthy life or be sick all the time?  That answer is easy!

As I always say, I could write a book on this or that subject, but on this subject, the bottom line is that everyone needs to take responsibility for their own health - to do their own research from independent sources.  Some great resources can be found at foodbabe.com and Mercola.com.  There are much more good sites on the internet.

Sometimes I don't know where these posts are going to go.  This one is turning into a series of random thoughts all related to healthcare and why I believe none of the current or future government healthcare "remedies" will work.  Healthcare costs are out of control, as are needless tests and procedures, resulting in insurance costs that are sky high and going up.  For example, my brother stepped on a nail, went to the emergency room and they gave him a tetanus shot.  The cost for those few minutes?  $1200 for the visit, plus $200 for the shot.  As with other diseases, more people die from the tetanus vaccine (DTaP or TDaP) than from tetanus.  Tetanus information here.  It's the same for several other vaccines.  I've covered vaccines in depth over the past two years on this blog, so won't get into vaccines here.  Please see many of my past posts for that.

So what is the solution to healthcare problems?  Well, if I was the president, I would phase out, over say a 10 year period, all artificial ingredients, all chemicals in food, as well as most or all pesticides and suspected carcinogens.  I would form a completely independent commission with no one who has ties to the drug industry to independently study all drugs and vaccines.  I would separate foods and vitamins from the FDA (which would be made into an independent commission).  I would require all schools to teach good nutrition and natural methods to stay healthy.  And I would form an independent commission to come up with a cap on medical costs.  This would be a start.  But because I will never be president, and no president will do this, the only other choice is to take responsibility and control of your health.  It's really pretty simple and comparatively inexpensive - eat healthily, take proper supplements, get proper exercise, sleep well, avoid stress.  A lot simpler than the 1990 pages of the ACA (Obamacare).  People don't need regulations, the sick care industry does.  To understand why, please read this and check the charts.

How did I start on my road to health?  By reading health books and talking to healthy people.  There was a guy at the beach in Santa Barbara who was the healthiest looking person I've ever seen (he looked like he could have been on the cover of a Greek mythology book).  I asked him what he did for his health.  He told me to get a book called Health Secrets of the Hunza (they are one of the longest lived populations in the world) and follow their diet.  I did, and then over the years, refined the diet and added supplements based on research.  The results have been amazing.  I wish you the same great health.  Keep in mind that if you have health problems, with natural solutions they won't disappear overnight - it may take months or years, but you won't have any negative side effects from eating healthy.  Make sure you have a good health practitioner who knows about diet, supplements, and alternative therapies.

Future posts will tend to be more about photography - I've written pretty much everything I can about health and vaccines already.  I'll be doing a series of Venice Beach photos which I started shooting around 1980 through the present.

Photography - Can One Lens Do It All?

The answer is of course not.  But it can do a lot!  I just recently got a super zoom lens so when I ride my bike to the beach I'm covered because I can't (or wouldn't want to) carry a lot of equipment.  Most articles I have read said these lenses are not very good, but I decided to take a chance on it.  And I decided to test it for different shooting situations.  As mentioned in a previous blog, this could be a book-length subject.  What I'm writing here are just some general ideas and thoughts that you may find helpful.

A few things first about a super zoom, or any zoom - the edges of the images are usually not sharp.  When shot wide open, the problem gets worse, and also at certain focal lengths the same problem.  Also, prime lenses let in more light (can be f/1.2, f/1.4, f/1.8, up to around f/2.8).  Zooms can go from f/3.5 - f/6 range or higher and will change at difference zoom ranges with the widest part of the zoom letting in the most light.

With the above in mind, and with the high ISO in modern cameras, as well as image stabilization, I figured shooting at f/5.6 - f/11 would not be much of a problem, especially in daylight.  But I also wanted to see what would happen shooting in low light with a tripod.  Usually with portraits, you want a sharp subject with the background soft or out of focus (or a solid color where the focus wouldn't really make much difference), so I was thinking this zoom might actually make a good portrait lens.  The reviews say that 85mm to around 105mm are the best lenses for portraits (although there are those that will shoot them at anywhere from 35mm - 200mm), at least for close-up portraits.  For full length, perhaps 35mm to 105mm would be a good range.  This lens includes all those focal lengths.  Below are a few test shots of myself with my new lens on a full frame camera.  One additional note:  if this lens was used on a cropped sensor camera, multiply it by 1.5 on a Nikon or 1.6 on a Canon with a cropped sensor.

The above photo was shot at ISO 1000, 1/6 second at f/5.6, 82mm.  The below photo is a close-up crop of the image.

 The above image was shot with on camera flash, 1/60 sec at f/5.6, ISO 1000, 82mm - was comparing flash to no flash.  The below photo is a crop of this image.

This photo was shot at 65mm at f/4.8 (the widest f stop for the focal length), with flash, 1/60 sec, ISO 1000.  The below is a close-up crop.  I'm about 7 feet from the background, which is enough to throw it out of focus a bit.  At f/1.8 it wouldn't be even recognizable.

 And in this photo, ISO was 1000, at 125mm, 1/60 at f/9, with flash.  The below image is a crop again.

Some other things to keep in mind - from what I've read, some zooms work better on one camera body than another.  There are zooms specifically made for full frame cameras and cropped frame cameras.  Some zooms made for full frame cameras work fine on cropped frame sensor cameras, some do not.  If they work, don't forget to multiply the zoom range by 1.5 or 1.6 or whatever factor is right for your camera.  If you are using one of these, and you can visualize cropping about 10-15% off around the edges of the image, the cropped image should be sharp to the new edges.

As can be seen from the above, even though the lens is a superzoom (28-300mm), it is capable of shooting sharp images and focuses very well, at least up to 200mm.  All photos were shot on a tripod with a wireless remote control, which allows the camera to focus before capturing the image.

Below is a photo of camera I was selling (to help pay for the new zoon lens), shot at 300mm on the new zoom, the top photo was cropped very little, the one under it was cropped a lot from the top photo.  At 300mm the lens is very similar to a macro lens.

This was shot at ISO 1600 with flash, 1/60 sec at f/10.

Is a super zoom worth it?  If you know how you are going to use it and it can do what you want (and maybe more), then definitely, in my opinion.  And it is a lot less expensive than buying a 24mm, 35mm, 85mm, 105mm, 135mm, 200mm lenses.  A 50mm f/1.8 lens is very sharp and very inexpensive.  Also, an 85mm f/1.8 is not too expensive, but again, all those lenses would be a pain to carry around everywhere you go.  If you had an assignment from a large company and were being paid well, then you would carry those with you, along with a variety of other prime lenses.  But for day to day things, or if you can't afford the expensive prime lenses (and they can be very expensive) it would be a good lens to have.  It could also be good for portraits and some wedding shots.  Having high ISO's and image stabilization allows you to shoot in fairly low light even without having an f/1.2 - f/2.8 lens, but you do lose the really shallow depth of field.

The following photo was shot with the zoom lens a couple of days ago while riding my bike down Ballona Creek and through Marina Del Rey on the bike path.  Because you wouldn't be able to see the full size image here, I've successively cropped the image to show that it is quite sharp as shot.

The settings were ISO 1000, f/8, 1/4000 sec, at 55mm.

One last note - while researching this lens, I found out the possibility exists that for the same exact lens one can be sharp while another not so much.  Sometimes people would return an unsharp lens for another copy of it which would be perfect.  Luckily, I bought this one used on Ebay at an excellent price, and it is exactly what I hoped it would be.

Hope you got something useful from this post, or at least enjoyed it.  The past two years I had written about vaccines, but think I've covered everything I can about them.  I will add new links about them from time to time, but meanwhile will be posting about photography.  Thanks for stopping by.

Photography and Light

In my last post, I had mentioned I would talk a little about light and photography.  There are many books written on the subject, so will make this pretty brief, just some things to look out for or try to give you better results.  This post is for shooting people....with a camera!

But first, one last note on why equipment can make a difference, and that relates to how high you can set the ISO while still getting usable photos.  If you're not familiar with ISO, the higher the ISO, the lower the light you can shoot in.  Or the higher the f stop or faster the speed of the exposure.  For example, I shot the below photo at ISO 1600, f/10 at 1/2500 second without image stabilization (forgot to turn it on!), and everything in the photo is in focus and sharp, from the person in the foreground to the mountains.  Why did I shoot at f/10?  This was shot with a super zoom lens, and lenses like this are usually sharpest between f/8 and f/11.

A problem I've seen in many online photos is a person or photo that is too dark.  Or black eye sockets on people.  It may be caused by your camera's (I'm including any device that can record images) metering system averaging everything in the scene, and the background is too bright, so the subject comes out dark.  What can you do if this is the cause?  Get a close-up meter reading of your subject, then switch your camera to manual mode and keep those settings you got from your subject, or switch the background to a brightness that closely matches your subject if that's possible.  You can brighten your subject with a flash or a reflector (in the shot above, the girl was not posed, but if she had been, would have used a reflector to lighten the shadow on her face).  Or in post processing (photo editing software) you can lighten the shadows, tone down the highlights, and much more.  In the photo above, everything was lit about the same (no shade), so left the photo as it was SOC (Straight Out of Camera).  Well, I did darken the sky a little and increase the contrast to highlight the clouds.

Remember, whatever you see will be close to what you will record with the camera assuming the contrast in the scene isn't too great.  Your eye can compensate for high contrast a lot better than your camera can.  If you see a harsh shadow or bright light on your subject's face, that is what you will get in the image, and perhaps a lot more so.  What can you do to avoid this?  Shoot early in the morning or late in the day.  Or again, use a reflector to reflect more light onto the subject, move the subject into the shade, or use a building as a reflector.  Or change the background if it's not that important.    Alternatively, you can use a scrim (diffuser) held over the person to diffuse the light.  As long as there is detail in the highlights and shadows, they can be recovered.

The direction of light can make a big difference in how someone looks.  The wrong light can make someone look scary or terrible, the right light can make them look beautiful.

The larger the light source, the softer the image.  Which is why the sun produces such hard shadows, just like a flash.  But use a reflector as a light source, or a diffuser, well - check the images below, all shot on a bright sunlight day.

If you shoot in RAW mode rather than JPG, you will have a lot more information in the image to work with, enabling you to edit your image more accurately.  If it's a contrasty scene, you have a better chance of keeping all the details.

Keep in mind that if you're using a blue building as a reflector, your subject is going to have a blue cast to them.  And around sunset, things are going to look a bit red.  These can be fixed pretty easily in photo editing software.  Things can get more difficult when you have mixed lighting, like tungsten and flash and window light all mixed together.

I prefer shooting in natural light.  Artificial lighting is another topic for another day, although it uses the same basic principles.

I used to shoot a lot of B&W film back in the film days.  Now everything is shot in color as it is extremely easy to convert to B&W should I want.  Below are some samples of photos using scrims or reflectors.

 This photo was shot in bright sunlight at UCLA using a small hand held scrim (diffuser) held over her.

These two photos used a reflector to fill in the light.  In the bottom shot, the sun was above and behind her.

Notice the difference in the two photos above.  The top one was exposed for the background - they wanted to see the sunset in the photo.  If I had had a large reflector or a powerful flash, it would have been possible to get a well-exposed photo of them and the setting sun.  But because we didn't have that available, the light on the group was too low and the image suffered.  In the image on the bottom, I exposed for the group and not the background - big difference.  Getting back to equipment - these were shot with a Canon 40D which has a cropped frame sensor with 10.1 megapixels.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are whole books written on lighting which go into much more detail.  This was meant just to help improve the day to day results for the average person.

As I've mentioned in the past, eliminate the variables.  Light is a variable, the f/stop is a variable, as is shutter speed, ISO, camera, lens, camera settings, subject, editing software, etc.  By eliminating them as variables (which means understanding them and knowing how to use them), you will get great results.  Hope this helped.