This Is Our Boy

by Jack Foster Mancilla

a photo by LensLord on Flickr.

Sometimes things just happen.

This little family came in to get some pictures of just their dogs. … Believe me when I say I love animals, I really do. But that includes the human animal. … And while images of just pets can be truly rewarding, and great, I have a penchant for getting groups together. I like the interactions between them, the way they play off each other.

So, when I started talking the family into including the child in the image, they thought it might be a good idea. But, when I asked for the father to lay on the floor and hold the brown dog up by the butt, while the dog’s front legs were hanging over the child’s shoulders, he said, “No. No way!”

Almost before he finished his rejection, the mother jumped in, stood up and said, “I’ll do it.”

This is the result. … The boy is smiling. The dogs are a little weirded out. The mom is lying on the floor behind the boy, supporting the dog. The father is standing off to the right; thinking I am making a fool of his family. I am taking one of my favorite pictures.

So it goes.

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Moon Before Sunrise

[by Jack Foster Mancilla

a photo by LensLord on Flickr.

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Dreaming of leaving the earth starts with dreaming about the moon. I do not dream because I dislike where I am; I dream because I want mankind to travel to the stars. I want mankind to live between worlds.

Is that such a weird dream?

Whenever I raise my eyes to the moon, I see beyond the moon, into the future of humanity. We must travel those dark places between the stars as a complete package of this earth. We need to travel in seedships that encompass the entirety of earth. … At least, that is what I think.

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ImageCaption

[by Jack Foster Mancilla

a photo by LensLord on Flickr.

Purchase this image.

Here we have a beautiful human being, running with a full head of steam towards her future, tomorrow.

In Andi’s world, tomorrow does not creep in its petty pace, from day to day, to the last sylabal of recorded time. Nope! In Andi’s world, running headlong into tomorrow, we can see a wondrous world.

I like this place.

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Sunset at the Painted Rocks

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

a photo by LensLord on Flickr.

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The desert is an amazing place when it is still. When it is still, you can peer through the mists of time.

This is a very specific example of time travel. Here, at these very rocks, for millennia congregated Native Americans. In ancient times, it was the place to be. People sat here, and talked, smoked, exchanged goods, maybe they even made political alinements, weddings. … We can never be really sure what happened here generally.

But, we can be one hundred percent positive that man gathered here, and they wrote on the rocks.

Our archeologists, and scientists, have analyzed the symbols, and decided that they stand for many things. … But, what those symbols really stood for in the minds of the people who spent their time at the rocks, etching the symbols that have stood in this desert for a very long time, That we have no way of knowing.

One other thing we can know. … We can know the majesty of a sunset at these rocks, especially when you share that time with friends.

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Stage Left Wall, a photo by LensLord on Flickr.

[by Jack Foster Mancilla

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This is the Stage Left Wall of the White Box Contemporarynart gallery in San DIego. Alexander Salazar, is the owner of the gallery. This is the way the Stage Left wall looked during his birthday party.

It was a costume party based on Porn Stars of the ’70′s. … This is just one wall out of the gallery, but the gallery has some fairly cool looking men and women. The guest of honor was Ron Jeremy!

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Link to buy this image.

How to buy images – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

Some people were having a little trouble figuring out how to buy images, so I thought I would create this little tutorial. Click on the image, to the right, to see an image large enough to read the directions.

This little tutorial takes you from an album image, on Facebook, to the gallery where the image can be purchased.

Purchased as an image of many sizes and finishes.
Purchased as card in different formats, and with text of your choice.
Purchased as piece of merchandise, like a shirt, or a cup.
Or, Purchased as a downloadable file of various sizes.

For those that asked me a question, “How do I buy your images?” I hope this helps. … If it does not help you, please ask me for help again.

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Awaiting the Master
[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

This was just a quick image, before Gustavo Romero’s concert on the 15th of July. It was a great program of DeBussy, and Gershwin.

He has two more concerts at the Neurosciences Institute Auditorium in La Jolla, on the 22nd, and the 29th of July, 2012. … If you like great pianists, these concerts are not to be missed. … I’ll see you there!

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After the Sunset – View Large

[by Jack Foster Mancilla]

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Let us speak of sunsets and the time just after the sun has gone. Here is one of those images. …

Usually, I like clouds to grab the light from the sun as it slips over the horizon and out of my view, but it lights the remaining, high altitude, clouds very nicely. … On this evening, there were no clouds. I was a little disappointed for the nonce, because I always think about what I am planning to shoot before I head out to shoot. … The weather chose to ignore my planing, and the sky remained cloudless. …

Still, I looked at the sky, and what was there, and I thought it beautiful.

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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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