New: Venice Beach Photography Series

Those who have followed my blog posts have seen as much about health-related topics, especially vaccines, as they have about photography.  Years ago I had started another blog called "Fit For Life" which I will now be using for the health-related posts (it was originally used to promote a vitamin business I had been starting, but which I abandoned to work for a vitamin company).  Going forward, this blog will be used only for photography related topics. 

Sometime around 1980 I moved to Venice, CA and have been taking photos at Venice Beach ever since.  Well, except for a good part of the 1990s when I had opened a vitamin health food store in Santa Monica and had to be there pretty much every day. 

This beginning series of posts will be about Venice Beach over the years since 1980.  Another series will be about headshot and portfolio photography, and various other subjects (lighting, composition, editing, tips and tricks, etc.).

Starting with the Venice Beach series - a little background regarding Venice Beach.  On a day to day basis, you never know what you may see.  In the 1980s there were a lot of performers - jugglers, mimes, acrobats, etc.  At the old Venice Pavilion (which is now gone) there was a skating slalom with some amazing skaters.  There were thousands of roller skaters (I was one of them) and a lot of movie and TV filming.  And there are many events during the year - the Festival of the Chariots, Muscle Beach bodybuilding and bikini competitions, basketball games, and more recently - National Topless day, and much more.

I think this photo sums up the Venice Beach experience:

There's a good chance that's the kind of day you will have.  I'll try to keep the photos in somewhat of a chronological order.  All the photos before the year 2000 were shot with a Nikon FTn.  Some color photos may have faded a bit before I was able to scan them.  They were edited to try to restore them as the best I was able to. 

The next photo is of X Swami X (Link to Google for more info) - he came out to the Venice Boardwalk with a step stool that he stood on and told jokes (some x rated, thus his name), talked about politics, etc.  He said a Polish parachute is one that opens on impact.  Also, he used to say that "all good things must come to an end, but that since this ain't such a good thing, that he would keep on talking for a while."  In the early '80s there were a lot of dogs running around Venice Beach, thus the photo.

Next - Skateboard Mama - who could be seen skating and windskating in Venice and Santa Monica well into her 80's - and perhaps she still is, although haven't seen her for a few years.  I first met her while she was doing the slalom at Venice Beach and always enjoyed talking with her over the years.  Here is a link to Google about her:  Skateboard Mama.

 The above photo was the first one I shot of her, probably around 1981 or so.  The next one was also shot around that time.

This photo of Skateboard Mama was shot in 2006 with a Panasonic FZ30 digital camera.

Back in the mid '80s I had made a folding postcard of Venice Beach - below are the photos I had included in the card:

 View of Ocean Front Walk.

 View of Venice Canals from Venice Boulevard.

 Windward Avenue looking east from Venice Beach.

The old Muscle Beach weight pen with Annie's (no longer there) in the background.

LAPD officer Kelly Shea with one of the postcards.  I can't say enough nice things about her - she was a great police officer and a totally wonderful person.  Sadly, she passed away from breast cancer a few years ago.

Hope you've enjoyed this post.  Have a wonderful weekend (and week).

Calibrating Your Photography

Calibrations - Some say you have to calibrate your monitor.  Why?  No, really, why?  There are a lot more reasons why you don't need to than why you do.  If you are a professional photographer working on an ad campaign or for a magazine, then you would probably need to, although I know of one photographer who said she never does...and she is one of the top photographers in her field.  And photo labs need to calibrate their equipment to give their customers consistent results.  But for an individual photographer, calibration would add time and cost...and most likely not make a bit of difference in the end result.  He or she would need a much more expensive monitor, plus the calibration software.

If you send your photos to a lab, with proper instructions, after a few times they will learn how you like your images printed.  If you do them yourself, you will also learn how to get them to look the way you want.  Everyone has a different monitor, so unless everyone calibrates theirs, if you send them your images they will look different on their computer, tablet, or cell phone monitors anyway.  Also, everyone's color vision is not the same.  Once you have a print that you like, then all you have to do is lighten or darken the monitor to match, perhaps change a few other settings.  And from then on, what you see on your screen and the print output should be the same.  Actually, I suppose you could call that a calibration of sorts, but not the calibration photographers are talking about.

Back in the film days, when I used to make prints in the darkroom, I would make a test prints with several different exposures on strips of photo paper, and then look at them in the light to see which was best.  The same can be done now if needed.  If you're having a large print made (say 24x30 or larger), crop the most important part of the photo (say into a 4x5 of the same part of the image) and ask the lab for a few sample prints.  Then you can tell them which one you prefer.  You may also want to know what kind of light it will be viewed under (daylight, tungsten, how light or dark the environment, etc.) as that will affect how it will appear.  And finally, it may also depend on what material the image is printed on - paper, metal, canvas, wood, etc.

How you shoot the photo in your camera can also make a difference.  This is why I shoot in RAW - I can then adjust the white balance (color balance) in Lightroom if needed, along with any other adjustments without worrying about artifacts showing up (artifact, as used here, means any feature that is not naturally present but is a product of an extrinsic agent, method, or the like) fine-tuning it.  If I shot in jpg and had the wrong white balance set, and saved it multiple times trying to get the color balance correct, it might result in unwanted artifacts showing - perhaps banding, noise, etc. (see photos below).  You'll know when you see them.  Eliminate the variables.  White balance is one of them.  You don't need to think about camera calibration when you shoot in RAW, although you still need correct exposure, and once you know how your camera renders the images, you can set Lightroom (or whatever program you use) to adjust for color/white balance and exposure during import, and then

This is how I shoot and edit - it works very well for portraits, headshots, street photography, natural beauty, nature, or whatever else I shoot.  The important thing is that people love the final photos.

The photo above taken at the Santa Monica Pier is the original with some minor adjustments and saved once.

This second photo has been saved multiple times, resulting in more noise and artifacts, which is pretty obvious in the sky and the wooden pier.

GMO's & Glyphosate, and Vaccines

I always thought GMO's were bad for you, and that glyphosate (and Roundup) were probably carcinogens.  The reason was that I wondered how our bodies could possibly use "food" that it never before encountered.  It may be made of the same basic ingredients, but in forms that it wouldn't recognize.  Sort of like changing a key and expecting it to open the same lock, even though the key is still made of the same metal.  After watching GMO's Revealed over the last nine days (yes, all nine episodes, each around 2 hours in length), I've discovered that GMO's are infinitely worse than I had thought.  I am so glad I've avoided them as much as I have, which is almost 100%, except perhaps by accident or if eating out, which I seldom do.

What has happened over the last 40 years?  Fertility rates have dropped 50%, autism has gone from around 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 48 (1 in 25 for boys), diabetes has skyrocketed, cancer is skyrocketing (and at younger ages) as have many other health problems.  Even sports injuries have been rising.  If you were to draw graphs of all these changes and compare it to graphs of glyphosate and Roundup usage, GMO production, and vaccinations, you would see parallel slopes.  The GMO's Revealed went into details into how this is happening and how they interact with our bodies, and after watching it I have no doubt these, as well as vaccines, are responsible for our current state of health in this country.

Occasionally, something I've eaten may have had hidden GMO's - like anything with soy, corn, or canola.  They even put canola in trail mixes.  Fructose is from corn, but even from organic corn it is still bad for you, but worse if from regular corn (GMO).

How do you go non-GMO?  By going organic or non-GMO certified.  If you are experiencing health problems and no one knows why, do what I did 40 years ago - go to a healthy diet, which means no GMO's and preferably organic.  Eliminate chemicals, artificial ingredients, sugars, added natural flavors (which may not be so natural), and do this for at least 6 - 12 months.  Then see how you feel at the end of that time.

What else should you do?  Look around you.  Talk to your friends and neighbors and those who are not well, find out what kind of food they eat - most likely fast foods, processed foods, and junk foods - all of which probably contain GMO's.  And see who never gets sick and find out what they eat.  I've lived both ways, and before age 30 I was sick several times a year and had many other health problems.  I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and changed my diet, then added supplements to it, and now no longer get sick and got rid of the other health problems.  It has made a huge difference in the quality of my life.

One more piece of food for thought - they claim GMO foods are the same as regular foods.  If they are the same they couldn't patent them, could they?  So they are not the same.  When the body sees something it doesn't recognize, the immune system attacks it.