We’re having a conversation here. … You need something? – View Large
Link to my large collection of pet photos
[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

I love animals. And they love me. Here is a single image of some Boston Terriers that I talked into sitting on my little furniture. My niece gave me the furniture as props to shoot pets with. If you wander through the larger gallery, you will see some very cool shots.

All these gallery shots were taken a while ago, and I have become much better at my work through the passing of time. I think it would be great good fun to shoot another thousand pet photos.

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California Lupin – Lupinus albifrons – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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Some of the first, easily noticed, spring flowers are the Silver Lupins that pop up. … They are mostly noticeable because they are purple/blue, and stand out from the normally dusty colors of Southern California.

This plant jumped up on a firebreak along Tecolote Canyon after our most recent rain.

Lupinus albifrons, Silver lupine, white-leaf bush lupine, or evergreen lupine, is a species of lupine (lupin). It is native to California and Oregon, where it grows along the coast and in dry and open meadows, prairies, and forest clearings. It is a member of several plant communities, including coastal sage scrub, chaparral, northern coastal scrub, foothill woodland, and yellow pine forest.

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Expectations for Tomorrow – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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Whenever I look at a flower, I try to see its entire life. Really, I also try to see the life cycle of the plant in my head. It helps me look at what is in front of my eyes. And it makes me happy.

For example, this image is of what? What will it become, and how long does the plant live? Is it an annual? A perennial?

This small flower, not much larger than your thumbnail is part a perennial. The plant lives through many seasons. As a fact of note, the first season you plant this, it is not much useful for bearing fruit. But, after that first year, it is a wonderful addition to your garden.

Just picture yourself, walking out to your garden with half a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and then reaching down and picking yourself a dozen fine strawberries to toss into that bowl. … Ah, those summer days are on the way.

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A San Diego Day – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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What a day we had today! It was a great day to go for a walk. Make sure you check out the LEFT, Middle, and Right links for a better view.

This image is very large. It is made from 17 vertical images, and the full resolution is 42 thousand pixels wide, and 5,200 pixels tall. … It is so large that it cannot be easily displayed. … So I cut it into three pieces, and I have linked to those three parts to give you a better idea of what can be seen.
… LEFT … Middle … RIGHT

In the left piece, you can easily see Mount Laguna with yesterdays snow upon its flanks.
In the middle piece, you can see Iron Mountain in the left of the frame, and in the right of this frame, you can see the rocky face of El Capitan.
And, in the right piece, you can see Cowels Mountain.

In all three frames, you can see the kind of day we had today.

Today was just beautiful.

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A Thousand Cactus Flowers – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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O.K. It is not really a thousand flowers. … But, as soon as I saw this cactus, and got close enough to see that it was flowers all across the crown, I thought, “Holy smokes! That’s a thousand flowers.” … No, really, I thought that.

But it is beautiful. …

One thing about Macros that bugs many people is the narrow depth of field when you are so close to the subject. … One way to fix that is to shoot many images and pick the focused part of each image and then blend them together. … This image is not really a single image. This image is made from thirty images of differing focus points. …

Pretty cool!

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Pink in La Jolla – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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Jaz Cook, and her partner, hired me to shoot some images for their real estate business. She really wanted some images for their online presence. … We shot those, and they were very happy with them. We actually shot several times for several different looks. … But this image?

For this image, I had the lighting units there to shoot some portraits, and I love colors. … … So, in the moments between the real work, we played a little.

With the La Jolla sun banging against the empty La Jolla home, and streaming through the windows of a room with an ocean view and filled with mirrors, I gelled the units with a single color, and banged back.

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Four Friends in San Diego – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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Three Mustache Club Friends, and a new friend whose name I do not recall in front of the gallery. Terence, Harley, our new friend, and Charlene.

Last June, when Charlene was working as an apprentice at the Alexander Salazar Fineart Gallery, she started a closed Facebook group for a small set of friends. For the most part, the group consists of friends that like to don a mustachioed persona upon occasions for fun. … She invited me to join, even though I have a built in mustache.

Charlene still works once-in-awhile at the gallery, but she loves art, and comes to most openings. This opening, I cornered this small group of friends outside before they left. This is the result of that moment.

Cool!

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My Funny Valentine – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

Link to -> My Amazing Pet Photography Gallery

Well it is that time of the year, where thoughts turns to love. Love current, loves lost, loves past, and loves future. …

But one love always stands the test of time and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes. … The unquallified love our pets have for us, and we have for them. I know that at this very moment, while I have my feet up on a cushion in front of my chair, that between the chair and cushion, under my legs, lies Gypsy. She is waiting patiently for me to finish this little letter to my human friends, so that I can take her for a little tour around the neighbourhood. …

Well today is very special, we will go many dog places today, and she will be very happy. Me too!

Check out My Amazing Pet Photography Gallery, and think about a time when we can shoot all our pets together, on one very special day. Because, I would surely like that!

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All My Salazar Galleries in one place

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

Link to the reverse history

For almost a year, I have been shooting events for Alexander Salazar, for his Fineart gallery at the corner of 7th and Broadway, and at the Contemporary White Box gallery, between Broadway and “C” street, also on 7th avenue, and most recently, his exhibit space in La Jolla. … Inadvertendtly, the collection of galleries create a reverse chronological history of those events.

These events include Dancing Downtown, his one year anniversary party, and his White Birthday party downtown. They also include events at the Hilton Bayfront hotel.

You can go and meander through the past year, and you can find all the events that you attended, by name and by date.
This is a link to a single page with all the galeries in reverse order.
Link to the 48 Galleries.

The dates are listed like this, YearMonthDate, for example these are the four most recent events. …

20120209-TrueDelorenzo
20120304-FredBriscoe
20120203-HeidiThompson
20120120-AlisonVanPelt

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El Valencia Hotel – La Jolla – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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This is The Valencia Hotel in La Jolla. Since it is in a town that I have known for most of my life, it has never seemed very special. Boy was I wrong. I have come to realize that this is one destination hotel that many people know about. Mostly people with a generous income.

It is a beautiful Hotel. Inside and out. This is just the street side. It has a wonderful garden courtyard, pool area that seems like it is in a tropical land.

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Fred Briscoe at Alexander Salazar Contemporary Exhibit space in La Jolla
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[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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I shot this yesterday evening. I am posting it right now because, this evening, February 04, 2012, at the Alexander Salazar Fineart Contemporary Exhibit space in La Jolla, Fred Briscoe will be in attendence.

You can meet him, and ask about his creative process concerning general information, or the particular pieces on display. He works in stone and various metals.

And, he is a very nice man.

(Addendum 20120206) By the way. I had met Fred a couple years ago when I was shooting for the San Diego Fine Arts Society’s creator, April Game. The San Diego Fine Arts Society has metamorphosed into artpulse, and April Game is the Executive Director.

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This little flower lives by a surface street on the way towards Tecolote Canyon, a location where I walk my dog quite often.

Someone said that this flower is called a monkey’s paw. I do not know. …. What I do know is the location. … And that location is here. -> On Google Maps.

If you go there, give me a call and I will show you some other arts of Tecolote Canyon. It is a nice walk.

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I love living in San Diego, and I love shooting for Alexander Salazar Fineart galleries. Shooting for Alexander gets me out and about to different locations ad interesting times. I can go a little early, and wander home a little later, and the opportunities for catching a cool moment abound.

For example, I was shooting Alison Van Pelt evening at the Bayfront Hilton. – Please check out those links if you wish. – And that very evening gave me the opportunity to shoot this twilight image of Down Town San Diego.

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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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