It really did snow on Friday. My trusty company Honda and I, nearly 200,000 miles old, rattled up Pine Mountain Road above Cloverdale to find actual snow from the Enviso Snow Event. It was very pretty. At least I found a snow picture. Easy peasy. Then, because it [...]
Where's Waldo? Where's the snow? Not anywhere here in the flats of Sonoma County. Beside the random flurry of graupel on Friday, snow was hard to find anywhere (except above 1,700 feet or so) here in SR. Sure, what fell could be considered snow, but really, the slang for what [...]
It was too good to last. Spring has a way of teasing us in the middle of winter, enticing those flowering trees and fooling all of us in to thinking we somehow circumvented winter. Nope. Winter still has a firm grip on the northern hemisphere, in fact, March 20 is [...]
Quick note tonight...The RAWS reading at Hawkeye near the Geysers as of 9pm, recorded a temperature of 67 degrees, the RH is 9% and the wind is out of the NE gusting to 28mph. If it were summer, these readings would be very close to fire weather conditions. January. Go [...]
In December 2010, Santa Rosa received nearly 9.8 inches of rain. January has been a different story. Depending on what part of Sonoma County you inhabit, this months rainfall total is currently on the low side of meager. Santa Rosa has received just .98 inches since the start of our [...]
Lake Sonoma is not a huge winter vacation destination. A few fisherman ply the waters from time to time but the population of Lake Sonoma is around eight on a winter day. The story for Wednesday's edition of the Press Democrat dealt with the reservoir being above normal for this [...]
Beneficial rains in the Lake Mendocino watershed this Winter/Spring have pushed the level into some of the campgrounds around the lake. Going to be a good boating season on Lake Mendocino this summer. Watch out for the submerged objects though. Like guard rails, roads, kiosks and picnic benches. [...]
Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Tuesday's weather in a nutshell. I hung out on a few street corners this morning, waiting for people with umbrellas to walk by an interesting and colorful background. Had a gentleman call the police on me because he didn't believe I was with the Press Democrat. [...]
Co-photog Christopher Chung calls it the "Attack of the giant poppies!" We both chuckled. You can see that a wide angle lens distorted the size of our State flower. I shot this way on purpose, in order to frame people between flowers and make a different Spring / Earth Day [...]
Boy, what a difference an El Nino makes. El Nino, the warming of ocean waters in the Equatorial Pacific, can wreak havoc on California weather. The current El Nino was classified as a moderate event by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Although we've had some gully washers this [...]
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