I have been thoroughly blown away with the abilities of my little iPhone 4S.

The image to the right links to my iPhone 4s Gallery on Google+. You can go check out several pretty darned good images. The sensor is an eight megapixel sensor, and it has one of the best len’s systems in a phone camera around.

There are a couple cool things about the iPhone 4S camera. The first is that it can be set to shoot HDR as a default. That setting gives you two slightly differently exposed images to play with. … The second cool feature, and I think it is an amazing ability, is that your headphone volume control works as a cable release. … That is cool.

But that is just stuff out of the box. The iPhone also runs other software. I have over 40 applications for enhancing the photos shot on my iPhone.

Sometimes, very few sometimes but still some times, I will only carry my iPhone as a camera.

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There was a Moon

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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These two images were taken exactly seven minutes apart, on the same day, December 10, 2011, in Ocean Beach California.

It was my intent to wait until the moon got as low as it could, so that I could capture the Moon, the Pier, and the Surf, with maybe a little sand. Alas, it did not come to pass. We are all limited by external forces.

I got there early, and used my compass and “The Photographers Ephemeris” on my iPhone to plot where the moon would actually set. The Moon would eventually set just right of center in these two images, if it could be seen.

That was the problem. I had forgotten to consider that the eclipsed moon is very dark, in contrast to the dawning sky. … So, as the sky lightened, the moon faded away. It faded away long before it even got to the fog bank that you can easily see in the second image.

I find it very interesting to open both these images in two separate tabs of my web browser then use my arrow keys to jump quickly from one image to the other to compare the height of the moon, and the lightness of the sky.

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This image takes place in an art gallery. The gallery is the Alexander Salazar Fine Art gallery, located on the corner of 7th Avenue and Broadway in San Diego.

Although the name is specific, the name is redundant. While looking at this image it is obviously the image of a beautiful woman in her element as she swims in the sea of averted gazes. The people of polite society look deep into her eyes as they speak with her, but everyone sees her. She is beautiful, the lady in red.

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Julie Ashton and Jory Lasser were wed.

Good luck to the couple on their journey. May your lives entwine and be an amazing trip that is secure for all. And, I wish you both all the hapiness that could be possible between a woman and a man, for the rest of your lives.

It was a beautiful day.

Link to ➽ All Julie and jory’s galleries.

Link to ➽ The Preparations (Proofs)

Link to ➽ The Wedding (Proofs)

Link to ➽ The Family Shots (Proofs)

Link to ➽ The Reception (Proofs Unfinished)

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Saturday, the second of April, I shot an event for Alexander Salazar. It was the first year aniverssary of his gallery. It was a great event for a party, and the event was also a charity auction, raising money for children.

This is an image of a woman looking at one of the images. The image was eventually bought by the man on the far right, but I just love the image of this woman standing in judgement.

The entire gallery of the images can be seen here.
Alexander Salazar Fine Art Gallery One Year Anniversary

The Website of the gallery is here. -
Alexander Salazar Fine Art

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I like people. They are fun. They have a life of their own. And one of the greatest things that I get because I am a photographer is that I get to share some time with people that I like.

This is a friend. We walked around an island with my dog on a nice winter day in San Diego, between the winter rains of January 2011.

We spoke of hopes and desires for our tomorrows, and we spoke of times gone by. We shared a very nice day.

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One of my nighttime San Diego excursions brought shivers to my body. I know that the kinds of temperatures in San Diego are so much more humane than the temperatures when I lived in Denmark, or my friends in Montana, or even in Julian, which is just a few miles up the hill from here. Still, for me it was cold.

I felt the heat before I saw the heater. Walking down the street, the warmth came to my face, and as I came closer, the warmth came slowly to my body. Ah, the respite was quite welcomed.

On this New Years Eve, I wish you warmth and good company.

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Last weekend, I was invited to an event that was wonderful. The Black Label Table – Underground Supper Club had their second evening of fine foods, fine people, fine wines, and all in a place that is not a restaurant.

That was part of the ambience. It took place in a loft where the food was freshly prepared by two wonderful chefs with a penchant for the unique. The evenings meal was based on Momofüko in New York City. Living in San Diego makes Momofüko a little bit far to travel for a leisurly evenings meal. This was out of the park!

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One of the first things to be done in the morning, besides letting the dogs outside, is to fix the morning coffee.

As you can see, the early morning sun is cascading through the kitchen window, across the sugar, the coffee, the coffee pot, and the toaster, while my cup sits at the ready, awaiting the double sized portion of brew required for filling.

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Happy Thanksgiving. I am happy for many fine friends and fine things.

This is a morning Hibiscus flower in the back yard.

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Horses are huge. They are a kind of super sized mobile toy, like a giant red waggon that can take you anywhere, even over the rough ground that a giant red waggon could not cross.

Horses are alive. They are dreams, out of movies, fording rivers, carrying the righters of wrong, enabling humans to take giant leaps across the surface of the planet.

And they have giant reflective eyes. In the eye of this horse, you can easily see the horse’s owner, the horse trailer, the shape of this horse by its shadow. These eyes capture imaginations.

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Sunsets have always grabbed my attention. Many people see them as signaling the end of the day. For me, they are the bringers of the night, but more important, they open my eyes.

Sounds a little silly, but, the night is full of many amazing things to see and hear. There are sounds, stars, the moon, lights, living things, almost all of which, can only seen at night.

The night sky opens our minds to the immensity of the Universe. As the sunset colors fade through twilight, and afterglow, the distances of the Universe open the consciousness for those that gaze upon the deeps. The very closest thing we can see at night in the sky, is the 238,857 miles away moon, and we can see way beyond that. The most distant object visible to the naked eye is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, which is about 2 million light-years distance.

In between those two objects is a huge space filled with untold, and unimaginable, objects. That huge space is only a minuscule portion of the Universe.

How can looking at such things not open our minds?

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I wanted to shoot something for the 10-10-10 day. I got busy doing some other things and did not get to go out into the world and shoot something that illustrated the day.

But, I did have this flower laying around on the tenth day of the tenth month in the 2010th year of the modern calendar. …

So here is my visual ode to that specific day.

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This image is only a representation of my favorite possession. As you can see, this image is of an unsharpened pencil. And, you may wonder, how can a pencil, nothing more than graphite bound in clay wrapped with wood, be a prized possession?

Where people are often told that the eyes are the windows to the soul, I can say that a pencil physically connects me to the time line of humanity. It connects me to the history of the ancients. Any stylus for imprinting information on a clay tablet could be used to transfer thoughts through the ages.

Even more important for me than the past that the pencil represents, is that the pencil represents my ability to speak to humanity far into the future.

With, or without, conscious thought, a pencil applied to a carrying medium can transport our thoughts forward through time. Today, I write these words. Tomorrow, I post these words. These words can be read through countless tomorrows for the entirety of mankind’s existence.

You, reading this now, may be a member of the iReport bootcamp, you may be reading this while I am still alive. Or you may be my curious great, great, great grand niece a hundred years from the time of this writing. Far enough into the future, you may live on another planet. If all who read this story look deep enough into your minds you may catch glimpses into that future, or that past, that this story is a part of.

I used a pencil, but I am a photographer, a videographer, why not use a camera, or video with sound to express this thought? I choose the pencil as a symbol. A pencil is common to most of humanity today, and its function can easily be recognized ten thousand years ago, or ten thousand years into tomorrow. Only the concept that the symbolic pencil represents is important.

I chose the unsharpened pencil because, even unsharpened, it is full of promise. And, like a mind full of promise, until the pencil is sharpened it is just a stick.

Our minds, when sharpened and conscientiously put to use with conscious thought, can transcend the mundanity of the mud we came from and move mankind to the stars of humanities tomorrow.

I initially wrote this for a CNN project. It can be seen here.
Link to the CNN Report

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Some days require keeping your nose to the grindstone, working your bottom off, and a couple pots of coffee to keep the pups primed.

This is the opposite of that kind of day. The kids are in school, most of the tourists are between here and there. It is a day of reflection, listening to the birds by the bay, the gentle lapping of the wavelets against the pilings. … Tomorrow is another day, but today, I am comfortable.

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Pimelometopon pulchrum: The California sheepshead ranges from Monterey Bay to the Gulf of California with the largest populations in the lower half of the range, south of Point Conception. It is usually caught at the edges of kelp beds and rocky shores where its main diet consists of mollusks, lobsters, crabs, and small fishes. It is not related to the sheepshead of the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. And, even more important, it is mightily tasty!

Link to more information on the California Sheepshead.

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This image is one of my favorites of Ocean Beach. People are going about their business. There are five separate conversations going on, and when I look at the large image, I swear I can hear the voices.

I am not really hearing the voices, but I can read the body language. A few are drinking a beer and watching the sun as it sets behind the ocean. The cops are talking to a whole group of skate boarders. A woman is walking alone, glancing at the setting sun. Some of these people will sleep here tonight.

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Graffito is all over the world. The earliest forms are found on rocks, and in caves. All graffiti are put in their places by the hands of humans. What do they, the creators, see? What do they see when they spit colors across their hands placed on the wall of a cave when they move their hands away and see the void in the color where their hands were just moments ago? Do they look into the future and see the shadows of their descendants looking backwards through time, with the imagination to see into the eyes of the human creator? Do they exchange quantum moments of entanglement?

I hope so. It is what I see. It is what I strive for in my photos.

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This was a wonderful evening. These boys had spent the evening dancing across the surface of the sea with the wind and the surf. They had sat on their boards, watching the horizon, looking for any wave that caught their eyes. It did not have to be the perfect wave, the moment was perfect sitting on the gently rolling swells, only occasionally speaking with each other.

Even now, as they leave the sea, walking beside each other, they spoke not a word. The rhythm of the surf breaking against the pilings of the pier, and the call of the gulls, was all that could be heard. The boys of the sun were on their way forward, leaving their love behind, to rejoin common man.

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Wandering around in the valley, I came across this culvert with its walls covered in colorful graffiti. The colors of the paint contrasting with the luminescent green algae, and the urban location of this image are some of the things that keep bringing me back to this image.

I wonder about the people that painted these walls. Was it practice? Who did they think they were painting this for? It can only be for themselves. Like the walls of caves, long time deserted, this art will stand through time. Here is the heart of man.

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It is hard for me to say anything particular about this image. I just like it.

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In this study of a Garden Spider’s web in the evening sun, I love the way the web refracts the sunlight. Look at that little cone of colors, to the right of the spider, it is a soft focused part of the web, but the way the light is caught on the tiny droplets of the web. The tiny drops are the sticky trap part of the web.

This image is beautiful in its small version, but at twenty inches by thirty inches, it is an eye catching jewel.

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