Thursday night was just another night at the Oakland Coliseum. I've grown to expect weird happenings during Raiders football. The first few years the team resettled in Oakland after a stint in the southland, photog Chris Chung and I were assigned to shoot the games. Each and every home game, [...]
This post has been rattling around in the draft portion of this blog, but I managed to get it together while waiting for the Raiders-Seahawks preseason game to start. PD photographers, with tremendous planning from photog Jeff Kan Lee and Director of Photography Chad Surmick, cover the air show...from the [...]
Last day of the Legislature. Politicians. State Capitol. Lobbyists. State budget. Photograph all of the above. There were not many happy politicians on the Assembly and Senate floors August 31. Each side had their state budgets shot down, leaving some very dour faces in it's wake. [...]
Pretty warm yesterday, right? Yes, 106 degrees is on the extreme for Santa Rosa. Just to give some insight of how warm our mountains are, one just needs to look at the RAWS system around our the area. At Hawkeye near the Geysers, the low overnight was 88. Hopland, near [...]
The National Weather Service has updated their Excessive Heat Watch to a Heat Advisory for the North Bay interior valleys for this Monday afternoon thru 8pm PST Tuesday. Stay Hydrated! -Kent Porter
I see stars. No, not Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise. Not even Guy Fieri. The Big Dipper is visible tonight (Saturday) for the first time in almost a month (at least from my house). No wind and no low clouds. The flags at the local firehouse are still. As an [...]
It's horse racing season at the Sonoma County Fair. Horse racing is photographically like bicycle racing (ever see a horse on a bike Mr. Ed?) the competitors go by...quickly. If you mess up the exposure or are back focused in this autofocus world, you'll have to wait another time chomping [...]
The July crud lifted this morning. The tractors are smoothing over the race track here at the fairgrounds. The national anthem played by trumpeteer Pete Estabrook echoed through the grandstands, sending a flight of swallows searching for a quiter place. Lots of men in cowboy hats. The grandstand ushers are [...]
Originally, I started this blog to write about weather photography. That was last fall, when our weather was getting interesting. Now as August 2010 approaches, I'm wondering if our SR temperature will ever reach 85 degrees. Or, if the persistent layer of stratus (2500 feet deep this morning) will ever [...]
There are only so many photographs that make it in to the newspaper. Dubya dubya dubya has been a saving grace for we photogs who shoot too many photos and have $0 budget to hang them in some coffee shop. Coffee and I don't get along anyway. Still, the motivation [...]
How many frames in a photojournalists life? Millions. Literally.
I’ve lost count since I started shooting photos at eight years-old with a Polaroid Land Camera (which I still own). It’s a way of life this photojournalism thing which is endlessly fascinating. The trip along the way, now in my 31st year professionally and the last 25 with the Press Democrat, has been an adventure in life. What it has to offer, ranging from implausible beauty to the utterly cruel things life randomly pitches out have shaped and molded who I am. That means I get to witness history. Pretty cool, eh? This journey has included photographing lots of inanimate objects which can be terribly boring. I’ve also borne the brunt of people unhappy to see a photographer show up to document less than pleasant circumstances. Then there’s the weather, which wreaks havoc on the human race daily. So I document the clouds. My advice for anyone having a bad day is to go outside and take a picture of those clouds once in awhile. It will do wonders for the interior beast. Unless you are using a metal tripod in an electrical storm.
-Kent Porter