After having this image sitting idle in Lightroom for about a week, I decided that I couldn’t add any more to it and that it was complete. I shot this on the Sespe River in Fillmore, CA with my Canon S90. I guess you could say it is another one of those “magic hour” shots. Most of the post-processing I’ve been doing with these photos involves creating an HDR or panoramic image and then layering a bunch of textures over them until they become the painting-like pictures you see here.

I have to confess that this series is inspired in part by a trip to Santa Fe NM that I took with Amelia this year. Without getting too far into my own personal critique of what I saw while visiting the world’s 2nd largest (?) art market, let’s just say that months later, I am still processing the experience. Part of it is my way of trying to find inspiration in the town I live in. If I can draw from what is arguably Fillmore’s assets, i.e. it’s landscape and surroundings, than perhaps I can find some sort of salvation.

Here’s a new one for my Lotería series. I whipped this one out this morning while the woman and her child were in LA. The green on green is a bit intense, but I think it will work with the rest of the series.

Two more down for the Lotería set. I whipped these out yesterday with the new camera.

This project has been taking way too long – almost 5 years into it and I’m still nowhere near done. I think that the biggest problem that I had with it is that it has been a struggle for me to stay within the bounds of illustration as opposed to making art. I printed out a sheet of 9 fruit images and came to conclusion that some of the earlier pieces that I made for this project are a too far into the so-called realm of “art”. For this project, I should be thinking more along the lines of “commerce”. The redo of the Los Platanos image you see posted here is sort of the result of this realization. I’ve decided that all of the fruit images will stay within this general scheme of plain fruit against a solid background, the people images will stick to their particular scheme, the inanimate objects will have their own scheme and so forth. Who knows – maybe I’ll finish someday.

Lastly, the Panasonic GH2 worked like a champ – however, I discovered that it doesn’t support tethered shooting. D’oh!

This is actually another “redo”. I shot this image of the Fillmore sign years ago with my Holga. For reasons I will not divulge at this time, I decided to give it a try with my new camera. Pretty friggin’ cool. It’s like I out-Holga-ed my Holga…well, not quite.

This is the trestle just outside of Fillmore, CA. This is actually the second version of this image that I have shot, the first being made from my iPhone. After composing the iPhone version, I decided to go back and give it a try with my little pocket camera. Not that there was anything wrong with the original – I just wanted to make a larger version of the image. I really like how this one came out.

Although this image is about a month old, I decided to post it here anyway – this blog is meant to serve as a depository for my various projects that are not ready for my static website.

I shot this one outside of Piru, CA with my new Panasonic GH2. I’m pretty excited about the new camera – so much so, I’ve been running out at dawn and dusk to try and get some of those “magic hour” shots. This one came out pretty okey-dokey. Originally, I went out there on a mission to photograph a train trestle, but I ended up getting this one instead.