Tomato Trio.

The last of the tomatoes from my garden this year.

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Tomato Trio, 2009, Dolly Salazar.
Kodak 400 CN

Ice Puddle #1.

Continuing on the abstract theme:

The seasons have arrived.

Last night we had a fantastic thunder and lightning storm, of the house-rattling variety.  Decisive weather!  Speaking-truth-to-power weather!  You go, atmospheric disturbance!  Such storms don’t happen often up here, and it didn’t last nearly long enough for me, but it was fun.  And those heavy clouds lumbering along in the distance?  Don’t look like rain clouds, if you’re asking.  We usually get our first snow around Thanksgiving.

This series of frozen puddle shots were a surprise to me.  I did not expect them to be as indecipherable as they are.  This first one in particular confounds me:  These are rocks frozen in ice in a pothole.  As a normal person, I love the way it looks — that’s ice? — but as a photographer, I’m frustrated that there’s no real focal point; that lack of focal point is like an annoying little gnat.  What happened here?  Or does it matter?  Aaargh.

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Ice Puddle #1, 2007, Dolly Salazar
Ilford XP2 400.   Larger image here.

Grapeleaf Abstractions 1, 2, 3.

Screw ferry riding.  I’m gonna show you more unfocused pictures.

Just out in the yard using up a roll on a dark weathery day, kinda bored with what I was seeing so I started playing around with blur.

From this:  

To this: 

To this: 

In these images, I defocused the lens and jiggled the camera.  Also the dribbling rain and feeble wind probably helped.

Having trouble with the wee pictures?  To see them larger, go here, here, and here .

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Grapeleaf Abstractions, 1, 2 & 3, 2009 Dolly Salazar
Kodak TMAX 100

Ride the Ferries: Floating Heads

The anonymity of mass transit.  I passed this couple as I looked for a seat.  They glanced up from their newspapers, nodded at me, went back to reading.  I nodded back and went on my way.  Whoever they are, and whoever I am.

When I picked up my camera again a few years ago, I also picked up again my 1977 First American Edition (shines fingernails on lapel) of The Photographers Handbook by John Hedgecoe, which my brother gave to me for Christmas that year.  (I had inherited his Yashica — a giant moose of a camera!  Stolen.  Shame.)  Great book, learned everything; forgot it all later, but oh well.  Anyway, reacquainting myself with the book’s numerous examples and explanations, I flopped onto the page of “Deliberate Defocus.”   Ooooo!

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Ride the Ferries: Floating Heads, 2008, Dolly Salazar
Ilford Delta 400

Ride the Ferries: Group at the Counter.

Very pleased with this image. Here’s a larger version.

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Ride the Ferries: Group at the Counter, 2009, Dolly Salazar
Kodak 400cn

Ride the Ferries: Man with a Shake.

Around here, if you want to get to the mainland — aka “the Americas” — you will ride the ferries.  There are no bridges to drive from here to there, although there will be many occasions when you are at once both in your car and on a boat.  Thus, the ferry lanes are managed as part of the state’s highway system.

For the most part ferry travel is like any other mass transit experience:  dulled-down citizens gazing at nothing, eating, reading, snoozing, talking too loud, and waiting, always with the waiting.   The difference is that you can actually get a whole bench to yourself on a ferry.  The other difference, for me, is that it’s very peaceful to be on the water, which alleviates the nuisance.

This fellow was doing what most of us do when we’ve parked our cars in line at the landing and have an hour to kill before we load and sail.

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Ride the Ferries: Man with a Shake, 2009, Dolly Salazar
Kodak 400 CN

Jim & Evey Homecoming Reunion.

The  Lance Corporal and his daughter the day he returned from Iraq.

Happy Veterans Day.

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Jim & Evey Homecoming Reunion, 2009, Dolly Salazar
Kodak 400 CN. Larger image here.

Desert Windmills, near Yucca Valley.

The California desert landscape is filled with societies of windmills, rows and rows of them, like aliens marching along the rolling hills and scrub.  I love them.  I think they’re serene.

I’m kinda enjoying these stark b&w desert shots — they look to me like 1950s guidebook photos or B-westerns.  Because there are really no mountainous outcroppings in the deserts of California, or bodies of water, there’s no subtlety to the light.  The sun is just there and you see what you see:  light and shadow and little in between.

These were shot through a 150mm zoom, from a moving vehicle.  (Call me a multitasker.  Some people prefer to sing when they drive…*shrug*)

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Desert Windmills, near Yucca Valley, 1 & 2, 2009, Dolly Salazar

Kodak 400 CN

Twentynine Palms: Returning Marine.

Not a great shot, but my first glimpse of the Lance Corporal when he got off the bus at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, so a happy moment.

And here’s another happy moment, seemingly irrelevant, except that this is how you feel when your kid returns from a combat zone.  Well, no, I’ll rephrase..Actually, yes, this is how you feel, plus I’ll expand on that:  When your kid’s in the military, you tend to spend a lot of time reminiscing in a very corny way about when they were little, and you end up with nursery rhymes stuck in your head and trying to remember their assistant preschool teacher’s name because she’s the one who taught the kids about centrifugal force using two soda bottles to illustrate…ANYway, here’s a sweet little South African nursery rhyme that I remember from my mom’s old record collection.  My childhood, my kid’s childhood, my kid coming home.  See?  Corny.  But who doesn’t like Miriam Makeba?

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Twentynine Palms: Returning Marine, 2009, Dolly Salazar

Kodak 400 CN

Twentynine Palms: Abandoned V.

Down the road from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (which sounds like a place for one-stop shopping).

V for victory?  V for vittles?  V for vodka?  Maybe all of the above?  Have no idea what this building used to be, but it ain’t no more.

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Twentynine Palms: Abandoned V, 2009, Dolly Salazar

Kodak 400 CN