Raders Photo Challenge assignment: Play time

By Clifford Oto | Published: July 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

The new Readers Photo Challenge assignment is “Play.”

The old San Joaquin County Fair photography contest used to have a category called “people at work or play.” Since this is summertime and many people are on vacation we’re going to take up the latter half of that and do photographs of people playing.

Getting photos of people in general and of strangers specifically, can be a daunting task. One has to get over their initial shyness to ask to take a person’s photo but I’ve found that most people tend to be receptive if you as Kindly and politely, explaining why you want to take their picture. Of course, if it’s a friend or family member this becomes much easier.

This assignment is not just people sitting for portraits. It’s of candid photos of people having fun. Get them doing something. If its a hot day, maybe get them swimming rather than just sitting poolside. Instead of shooting selfies with your friends while out clubbing, photograph them dancing. Maybe you’re at a fair or amusement park. Get shots of people on the rides or enjoying a hotdog or cotton candy.

Expressions can make or break a photo of people. For this assignment look for smiles and laughter. If you have more than one person, look for them interacting with each other.

Looking for the right moment and timing your shots are key. You have to be looking for and anticipate these kinds of pictures and be ready for them. It’s much more difficult to shoot “off the cuff” to get these photos on the spur of the moment.

The can be doing a physical activity such as hiking, swimming or running. The activity can be more passive such as painting or playing a board game. Just as long as your subjects are having fun as they play.

I recognize how difficult taking pictures of people can be and it may not be everyone’s forté, so you’ll have an extra week to complete the assignment. Go out and have as much fun as the people in your pictures will be having as they play.

How to enter:

1. Email your entries to coto@recordnet.com. Type in “Play” in the subject line

2. Photos have to be shot between July 31 and August 21.

3. Entries are limited to no more than 12 photos from each photographer.

4. Include your first and last name, where you live, the kind of camera /lens you used and where the photo was taken (e.g.: “Photographer: John Doe of Stockton. Location: Highway 4 and the San Joaquin River in Stockton. Camera: Canon Rebel T3i w/55-300mm lens”).

5. If there is a recognizable person in the photo, please identify them (name, age, hometown) and what they’re doing in the picture (e.g: “Janie Doe of Stockton, 6, rides the carousel at Pixie Woods in Stockton).

6. Please feel free to add any anecdotes or stories about how and why you took the photo.

7. The deadline for submission is Tuesday, August 21. A photo gallery of all the pictures submitted will be run on August 28 at recordnet.com.

Posted in Children, Column, People, Readers Photo Challenge | Tagged | Leave a comment

Readers Photo Challenge: Bridges

By Clifford Oto | Published: July 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

The latest Readers Photo Challenge is “bridges.” A bridge can be photographed as an architectural structure like any other building. Some are famous and iconic and be approached like photographing a monument or a statue. Like beauty found in nature, man made structures can have an aesthetic quality in their own way. Twenty-three readers sent in 59 photos. Here are some of the top picks.

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Mitch Bazzarre of Stockton was on a trip to the northern Sierras when he decided to stop for a shot on his way back home. Setting up his Canon EOS 6D DSLR camera on a tripod he took a night shot of stars and the milky way near Oroville. In the foreground was the Bidwell Bar Bridge over a portion of Lake Oroville. The night sky is perfectly exposed by a long timed exposure, but the suspension bridge is hidden in the darkness of a hillside with just the top being visible against the sky. Bazzarre tried to light it up with a flash light with a technique called “painting with light,” but it wasn’t strong enough. With a little patience Bazzarre waited for a car to drive over the bridge. Its headlights lit up the bottom portion and made his shot complete.

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Paul Yang of Stockton used what’s known as the “blue hour” to his best advantage. It’s the hour of dusk between sunset and the time the sky goes to inky black. With a Canon EOS 7D DSLR camera he photographed the Tower Bridge over the Sacramento River in Sacramento. The bridge is illuminated by its own lights and Yang perfectly balance the exposure with the evening sky with a crescent moon and a star-like Venus in the background.

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Freya Schwinn of Stockton got a shot of a bridge that is sometimes hidden from view. On a family trip to Yosemite National Park she used a Canon EOS 6D DSLR camera to photograph the Stoneman Bridge of the Merced River. Thousands, perhaps even millions, of tourists have taken photos of this bridge along with other attractions at the park. But Schwinn viewed it from a different angle. There are tunnel footpaths along either side of the bridge which are inaccessible during high water. But on Schwinn’s trip the water had receded and she was able to go into one of the tunnels to get a shot from the inside looking out. She captured the reflection of the high-arched tunnel and the natural scene outside in the shallow water at the bottom.

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Steven Rapaport of Stockton took his bridge photo a little closer to home. He got a beautiful sunset photo over Honker Cut from the Eight Mile Road truss bridge that connects King Island with Empire Tract in Stockton. Rapaport used the support beams to frame the sunset, clouds and slough for a complete composition.

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Sydney Spurgeon of Stockton used a Nikon D500 DSLR camera to photograph a historic bridge. At the 330-ft long, the Knights Ferry Bridge, near Oakdale, is the longest covered bridge west of Mississippi River. The obvious choice of subject is try to get an overall representation of the historic bridge itself, which Spurgeon did, but she went a step further. Shooting from inside the bridge she got a more intimate photo of an elderly couple. As they walked towards the open end of the bridge, they were silhouetted by the bright daylight outside against the much darker interior.

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Randy Bayne, formerly of Stockton but now of Newnan, Georgia, also photographed a covered bridge but this one is definitely east of the Mississippi. Bayne used a Canon EOS 60D DSLR camera to photograph the Red Oak Creek covered bridge in Imlac, Georgia. The bridge was built in the 1840s and still carries traffic today. The long horizontal of the bridge’s wooden railings helps to drawn in the viewer’s eye to the covered portion of the bridge on the left. A stand of dark trees on the right helps to balance out the composition.

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Chris Holt from Stockton used a Sony A7II mirrorless camera to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Shot during the blue hour, the bridges orange color, enhanced by its artificial lights, stands out against the rich blue of the sky, the water and the Marin headlands in the background. In the foreground is the historic Fort Point. The light on a smaller building near the fort and headlights on a car in the parking lot helps to tie the foreground in with the lights on the bridge.

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The fourth time was the charm for Janet Baniewich of Stockton in her attempts to get a shot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. As a passenger in a car being driven over the bridge, she tried to get a shot of one of the support towers of the western span with the sun in it with her Nikon D3300 DSLR camera. Her exposure was off as they past the first 2 towers. She miss-timed the third shot and didn’t get the sun in the shot. But by the time they got to the 4th pillar everything came together and she got her photo.

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All of the photos sent in can be seen in an online gallery at recordnet.com. A new challenge assignment will be issued on July 31.

Posted in Architecture, Column, Readers Photo Challenge | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hold still, please

By Clifford Oto | Published: July 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

Using a good, sturdy tripod is the best way to ensure that your pictures are shake-free. However, not everyone likes to carry one around all the time. Depending on the model, they tend to be bulky, heavy and awkward to use. I’m one of those people. If I have a subject that I definitely know needs a tripod to shoot, then I’ll bring one along. If not, then it stays home. I don’t carry one with me just as a matter of course. A telephoto lens can magnify the camera’s shakiness. To counter this the general rule of thumb is to match your shutter speed to the focal length of the lens. For example for 200mm lens, your shutter speed should be set at a minimum of 1/200th of a second. If you have a wider lens, say a 50mm, you can go down to about 1/50th of a second with decent results. When you’re caught without a tripod there are a few things you can do to mitigate camera shake. It is possible to hold the camera still for shutters speeds that are 1-2 stops slower than the lens’ focal length by turning yourself into a tripod. Pull your arms in tight and cradle the camera and lens in your left hand while holding on to the grip on the right side with your right hand and set your feet about shoulders-width apart. Try to control your breathing and shoot in-between breaths. If your prone to shaking or unsteadiness, try leaning up against something stable line a tree, pole or wall. There are very low-light conditions or times when you want to used a very slow sputter speed where the aforementioned techniques wont work. But there are other things you can do. Set the camera down on a stable surface, a table, fence or even the ground, anything that won’t move. The push down on the top of the camera to guarantee that if won’t move even in the slightest. Hold it down while you’re pressing the button and don’t lift up until the exposure is done. It’s possible to do a several-second exposure this way. Theoretically you can even do an exposure that last minutes in this fashion but practically one’s hand, arm of other body part could start cramping up, or you could have the urge to sneeze or get an itch to scratch and then you’d be forced to abandon your long exposure shot. There’s one big disadvantage of this technique. Whereas you can move a tripod around for the best angle, using some a flat rock or bench or something limits where you can take your shot from. One might be in the best spot, then again, it might not be either. If you know your going to be taking long exposures beforehand, there’s nothing better than a tripod to hold your camera still and one should be your first choice. But if you need to shoot with a slow shutter and you’re without one, there are things you might be able to do in a pinch.

Posted in Column, Equipment, Techniques | Leave a comment

June outtakes: Back on track

By Clifford Oto | Published: July 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

We’re all caught up again. Here are my 10 favorite photos from June. Enjoy!

 

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6/12/18

A kite surfer skims across the waters of the Sacramento River off of the shores of Sherman Island County Park near Rio Vista. The area has become a Mecca for kite boarders and windsurfers due to its consistently strong Delta winds.

 

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 6/13/18

Neighbors watch as a house that has been dubbed an eyesore and a nuisance is torn down by an excavator at Harding Way and Baker Street in Stockton.

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6/14/18

Duane Falls, left, and Kassie Smith from Cullman, Alabama ride the Super Sizzler ride on opening day of the San Joaquin County Fair at the fairgrounds in Stockton.

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6/15/18

Tracy’s Carlos Vasquez, left, attempts to turn a double play after forcing out Calaveras’ Blake Wilson at second during the 2018 High School Baseball All Star Classic at Delta College’s Cecchetti Field in Stockton

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6/21/18

Wearing a large Bob Ross wig, Librarian Jackie Rea holds up an example of a painting for participants to emulate during the Bob Ross Paint-Along at the Weston Ranch Library in Stockton. Participants followed along to a video as painter Bob Ross created a landscape. Ross, who died in 1995, was the host of an instructional TV show that aired from 1983 to 1994 and has found a newfound popularity through videos and Netflix.

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 6/22/18

Mary Natali of Stockton, left, and Joy Hoar of Linden ride the carousel at the 32nd annual Pixie Woods Wine Tasting fundraiser in Stockton. The event held at the Pixie Woods children’s amusement park, entertainers by local musicians, food and drink from 28 wineries, 21 restaurants and 4 breweries.

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 6/23/18

Three-year-old Kayden Harvey of Tracy cools off in the interactive water feature at Central Community Park in Mountain House.

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 6/27/18

Drag queen Hellen Heels (aka Jonathan Lopez) talks with children before the start of Drag Queen Story Time at the Arnold Rue Community Center micro library in Stockton.

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 6/29/18

A welder uses a torch to cut the beams of the old 2-lane bridge over the San Joaquin River to Rough and Ready Island at the Port of Stockton to dismantle it. The narrow bridge, built in 1950, is being replaced by a new 4-lane bridge, of which 2-lanes have been completed and are in service. Once the old 200-ft long, 18,000-ton bridge has been demolished and cleared away, work on the remaining lanes of the new bridge will commence.

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 6/30/18

Fourteen-year-old Karen Gutierrez of Modesto holds up a sign at the Families Belong Together rally at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Plaza in downtown Stockton. The rally, which opposed President Trump’s immigration policies, coincided with thousands of others nationwide.

 

Posted in Month in review, Outtakes | Tagged | Leave a comment

May outtakes: Oops! I did it again

By Clifford Oto | Published: July 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

Once again my apologies. I got busy and forgot to post my outtakes from May. So without further delay, here are my 10 favorite photos from May to be followed shortly by the June outtakes.

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5/4/18

Edison High cheerleader Alexis Rieta, 16, is reflected in the window of a minivan while scrubbing it down at the Edison Cheerleader Car Wash held in the parking lot of the school’s Taggart Gym in Stockton. Proceeds from the car wash go to funding summer cheer camp for the cheerleaders.

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5/5/18

Sixteen-year-old Destiny Nino works out with her father and trainer Angel Nino training at Louis Park in Stockton. Destiny was getting ready to fight in the 106-lbs weight class in the Junior Olympics, Prep Nationals & Youth Open boxing tournament in Charleston, West Virginia on June 24.

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5/20/18

Aurora Lewis with the VG Frogs team jumps her frog, Bubba Lewis, in the annual International Frog Jump finals at the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp.

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5/21/18

Weston Ranch High School graduating seniors are greeted boy cheering students at Komure Elementary School in Weston Ranch during the Senior Walk at the school. Two-hundred seniors, dressed in their graduation caps and gowns, paraded through the school to help motivate themselves as well as the younger students. This is the second year for the program that also encompasses nearby August Knodt and Great Valley elementary schools.

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5/24/18

Argonaut’s Wyatt Elmore, left, and Seth Tomczak celebrate after defeating Linden 3-1 in a Division V elimination game at Tony Zupo Field in Lodi.

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5/25/18

Paulina Kawasaki, left, and Tiffany Zscheile with Sunshine Ministries wash off a houseboat at Paradise Point on White Slough off of Rio Blanco and Eight Mile roads in Stockton. The ministry provides houseboats for week-long trips on the Delta to church groups.

St.Mary’s Karl Winter, left, and Placer’s Adam Fragola fight for the lead on the last lap of the Boys 1600 meter race at the Sac-Joaquin Section track and field finals at Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove. Winter won the race.

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5/28/18

Sea cadets stand watch over the Walk of Valor flags at the Memorial Day observance at Cherokee Memorial Park in Lodi.

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5/29/18

A female Anna’s hummingbird feeds its offspring in a nest it built on a sea life-themed wind chime on the porch of Terry and Don Brazil’s home on Oxford Way in Stockton. Terry Brazil says that the birds, which have been nesting in the spot over a month, don’t seem to be bothered by the swinging or the noise of the chimes.

Instructor Natalie Bowman leads a SUP (Stand Up Paddleboard) yoga class on Lodi Lake in Lodi. Offered through Headwaters Kayak Shop and Boathouse. Classes are held every Tuesday from April to September at 5:30 p.m to 7:30 p.m. to all experience levels.

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Readers Photo Challenge assignment: Bridges

By Clifford Oto | Published: July 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

In Stockton and San Joaquin County there are many rivers, sloughs and creeks that make their way through the city. With those bodies of water come many bridges that cross them and thus the inspiration for the next Readers PhotoChallenge assignment: Bridges.

I grew up in the small Delta community of Walnut Grove. It’s nestled along the Sacramento River and if I wanted to go anywhere, even just to visit some friends, it’s like that I had to cross at least one bridge. Today, while on my rounds for The Record I often travel over bridges on one sort or another several times a day.

We normally think of a bridge that spans over a river but also look for structures that carry the road over railroad tracks or even other roads. Overpasses, freeway bridges and train trestles are acceptable in this challenge.

Some bridges are unique structures. Unlike, say, an office building, they often don’t have an exterior “skin” The skeletal supporting architecture of beams and/or suspension cables is its aesthetic appeal. You can use the beams or supporting columns to frame other things in your picture.

Years ago my wife and I took one of those boat tours of San Francisco Bay. At one point the boat went under the Golden Gate Bridge. One usually sees the famed span from afar and our view from below gave us an unique perspective on the often photographed bridge. Try photographing whatever bridge that you choose from different angles to get a new viewpoint.

Instead of getting all or most of the bridge in your shot, try shooting a smaller section or detail of it. Sometimes a small part can be as good or greater than the whole.

Don’t forget the scenes around a bridge as well. Many bridges are in rural or semi-rural areas. Wildlife, birds, turtles and even otters or beavers, can often be seen in those areas. Boaters and fishers can make a nice accent in the foreground of your photo. You can use the bridge as a backdrop for a nice portrait.

The time of day is as important to a bridge photo as any other, perhaps more so. The morning/evening light of sunrises or sunsets can give a warm, pleasing glow to an otherwise cold, grey of steel beams. A bridge can be a nice part the composition along with a rising or setting sun or moon. Some bridges are lit up after the sun goes down which can make them perfect for a night shot.

With about 1,000 miles of waterways in the nearby Delta finding a bridge shouldn’t be difficult. If you want to do a little driving, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate are only a few hours away in the San Francisco Bay Area. The bridge that you photograph can be big or small, famous or obscure. You can photograph it with a set plan in mind or improvise on the spot. Either way, you can cross that bridge when you get there.

How to enter:

1. Email your entries to coto@recordnet.com. Type in “Bridges” in the subject line.

2. Photos have to be shot between July 3 and July 17.

3. Entries are limited to no more than 12 photos from each photographer.

4. Include your name (first and last), hometown, and the kind of camera/lens you used and where it was taken (e.g.: “John Doe of Stockton. Location: Highway 4 & San Joaquin River, Stockton. Camera: Canon Rebel T3 w/ 55-300mm lens”).

5. If there is a recognizable person in the photo, please identify them (name, age, hometown) and what they are doing in the photos, and if they’re related to you. (e.g.: Jimmy Doe, 8, of Stockton fishes from the bridge over Honkers Cut on Eight Mile Road in Stockton).

6. Please feel free to include any interesting anecdotes or stories on how you took the picture.

7. The deadline for submission is Thursday, July 17. A photo gallery of all the pictures submitted will be run on July 24 at recordnet.com.

Posted in Architecture, Readers Photo Challenge | Tagged | Leave a comment

Readers Photo Challenge: More than window dressing

By Clifford Oto | Published: June 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

Windows is the subject of the latests Readers Photo Challenge assignment. Using something in the foreground to frame your subject is a compositional technique that’s often used in photography. What better frame to use than a window?

Twenty six readers sent in 96 photos. Many delved beyond the subject matter and entered photos that were more than mere window dressing. Here are some of the top picks.

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Donn Sperry of Stockton returned home from work on Flag Day, June 14. A flag that he put up in his window was backlit from a light inside the house. With a Sony Alpha NEX-7 mirrorless digital camera Sperry photographed bright flag standing out against the darker frame of the window.

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Erv Rifenburg of Lodi went on a fishing excursion to the Gulf of Alaska. The skies were rainy and the seas were rough and the fishing was so-so. But he managed to come back with a great photo. Rifenburg used a Nikon P510 digital point-and-shoot camera to photograph fellow fisherman Mike Kosmide through the front window of their charted fishing boat. Kosmide wearing a bright yellow rain slicker, stands out against the neutral colors of the darker interior of the boat and the grey sky and ocean.

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Susan Scott of Stockton photographed the reflective windows on the UOP Professional Development Building on March Lane in Stockton. With a Canon Rebel DSLR camera she captured reflections of the surrounding trees with the angles of the window panes reminiscent of the rigid geometric patterns of abstract Dutch painter Piet Mondrian creation.

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Most people thought about photographing houses of other structures for their entries. Janet Baniewich of Stockton did a little out of the box thinking for her photo. While on a visit to Billings, Montana, she used an Apple iPhone 8 to photograph a portrait of her 2-year-old granddaughter Rose Holland as she looked out the window of her playhouse.

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Dave Skinner of Stockton captured the art of decay and dilapidation in his photo. He used a Nikon D7000 DSLR camera to photograph a broken window pane on an old west replica building at the Amador County Fairgrounds in Plymouth. Hazy reflections are caught on the dirt-covered glass while the cracks make an interesting pattern.

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In the old days of film there was a process called reticulation in which the film was processed in very warm to hot developer and then doused in a cool fixing bath. The method distorted the film giving it an pronounced grain pattern and sometimes even damaged the film to the point where parts of the emulsion sloughed off the base celluloid. It all created an artistic effect that nowadays you can just add a filter to a modern digital image.

Rick Wilmot of Lodi recently visited the Old Sugar Mill in Clarksburg. A former sugar manufacturing plant that stood vacant for years, the building has been repurposed to house several different wineries. With his Canon 7D Mk II DSLR camera Wilmot photographed a window that had been painted over long ago. Shot from the inside, the backlit glass shows a grainy texture and the scratches and cracks in the paint make it look like a frame of reticulated film all without scalding developer or digital filter.

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Sydney Spurgeon of Stockton is currently on a trip to Munich, Germany. On her travels she visited the former Dachau concentration camp which now stands as a memorial to the horrors of the Holocaust. Through the windows of a set of barracks she photographed others across the garrison compound. The think windows and its sills, silhouetted against the brighter outdoor light, almost look like prison bars, adding to the solemnity of the scene.

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Ward Downs of Stockton visited his stepdaughter Katelin Holloway at the Original Joe’s restaurant in San Francisco. He snapped a picture with his Samsung S8 smartphone as she held up her 4-month-old son Juno Ramirez to one of the restaurant’s windows for her 3-year-old son Luca Ramirez to see.

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On a trip to Columbia State Park in Tuolomne County, Diane Beltz of Stockton photograph a window with a sign panted on the glass. The sign, that said “Entrance on corner” with a finger pointing in that direction, stood out against the dark interior. A curtain falls in the opposite side of the frame from the sign and what appears to be the end of a wooden hangar peeks out from behind the far edge of the curtain and timidly points back at the finger.

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Teresa Mahnken of Morada who’s a realtor used a Samsung Galaxy 8 smartphone to photograph a window latch in a house she was showing near Victory Park in Stockton. Indirect light gently illuminates the old-fashioned latch and window frame to make the picture warm and inviting.

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Marty Kuslich of Stockton was sitting in his car eating for a meeting to start in Jackson when he saw a dog peeking out of a window of a nearby house. He used a Apple iPhone 8+ to photograph the pup as it did its job as a watch dog.

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Most of the entries concentrated on one or two windows but Carrie Walker of Stockton found a building that’s almost nothing but windows. She used an Apple iPad to photograph the new San Joaquin County Courthouse at night. The interior lights makes nearly every window in the building to glow against the black night sky.

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Steven Rapaport of Stockton used a Canon EOS 5D Mk IV DSLR camera to photograph his daughter Annie Hunt near a window at her home in Washington, D.C. He captures Hunt as she works on her computer and a raindrops from a storm outside obscures the view through the window.

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All of the photos can be seen in an online photo gallery at recordnet.com. A new challenge assignment will be issued on July 3.

Posted in Architecture, Readers Photo Challenge | Leave a comment

Make ‘em laugh

By Clifford Oto | Published: June 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

There’s an old adage in show biz that goes “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Photography can be similar. It’s easy to show some emotions in pictures. You can tell when someone is happy, sad or angry without much effort. Showing humor is another story. I think part of the problems that humor is very subjective. Everyone has a little different take on what’s funny.

The San Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association (SFBAPPA) used to have a monthly photo contest for its members and one of the categories was “humor.” Sometimes I would see the humor in some of the winners, other times not so much. Don’t get me wrong. They were excellent photos, they just weren’t that funny to me.

Several years ago I entered the SFBAPPA contest of a girl feeding animals at a petting zoo at the San Joaquin County Fair. She was feeding a llama with one hand while trying to keep a goat from eating an ice-cream cone filled with feed in the other hand. I thought it was cute and mildly amusing, but not out-and-out funny and I didn’t expect to win. It got a first place.

There’s a difference of people being funny and others “doing” funny. For comedians, clowns and the like, It’s their job. Photos of the them can be naturally humorous. But if you can capture people doing something ordinary in an unusual way or something unusual as if it were an everyday occurrence, that can be even funnier.

Way back in 1995 I was out covering a heavy rainstorm. I spotted three pre-teen boys in the Lincoln Village neighborhood of Stockton. They were asking home from school when they stopped near an intersection that was flooded with several inches of rain water. The boys were prompting passing cars to speed up to cause large splashes of water to spray on them. They were soaked to the bone but having a great time. I have often wondered what their mothers said to them when they got home.

Sometimes all you need is just a little twist on a normal take to make things funny. In 2011, I shot a Stockton Thunder Hockey game at the Stockton Arena. The Thunder’s Garet Hunt got into a fight with Bakersfield Condors’ Pascal Morency. Hockey players fight all the time. Nothing inherently unusual or necessarily humorous about that. But a woman just on the other side of glass partition that surrounds the rink was laughing and having a grand ol’ time watching the two men pummel each other. The fight wasn’t funny but how the woman reacted to it was.

Another saying goes “brevity is the source of wit. To communicate it’s intent, a photo, like a joke, should be concise and to the point. Any extraneous information or rambling explanations can kill a joke. In the same vein, a photo that’s cluttered or takes to long to show the viewer what’s going on in the picture, will fail to communicate its humor. If a picture that has any chance to be funny, it first has to be what’s known in the business as a “quick read.” Mastering that is as key to photographing humor as is learning how to do a punchline, pratfall or pie in the face is to comedy.

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AgFest costume contest

By Clifford Oto | Published: June 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

TOP: Nine-year-old Gracie Irola with the Escalon 4H dressed as Cleopatra while her steer Harold was made up as King Tut in the annual costume contest where animals are dressed up by the kids who raised them at the AgFest at the San Joaquin County fairgrounds in Stockton.  BOTTOM LEFT: Fourteen-year-old Erin Grogan, left, and 15-year-old Emma Bracco, with the Escalon FFA dressed up themselves as well as their respective goats Tank and Mepe as Dr. Seuss characters Thing 2 and Thing 1. BOTTOM RIGHT: Eleven-year-old Belle Begllinger with the French Camp 4H puts a Hawaiian lei on her turkey Gloria Gobbles to make her a “luau girl” in the annual farm animal costume contest. [CLIFFORD OTO/THE RECORD]

Posted in Agriculture, Event, Feature, General news | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sounds of Swenson

By Clifford Oto | Published: June 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

TOP: Austin James performs with his band at the first Sounds of Swenson concert at Swenson Park in Stockton. The concert in the park series is presented every second Thursday of the month from June to September in association with Save Swenson. BOTTOM LEFT: About 200 to 300 people listen to Austin James perform with his band at the first Sounds of Swenson concert at Swenson Park in Stockton. BOTTOM RIGHT: Guitarist Bill Stevens with the James Austin Bands, plays a riff on his guitar at the first Sounds of Swenson concert. [CLIFFORD OTO/THE RECORD]




										

					
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    Clifford Oto
    Clifford Oto, an award-winning photographer, has been with The Record since 1984. Through the changes from black and white to digital photography, he’s kept his focus on covering the events, people and life of San Joaquin county. This blog deals ... Read Full
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