Author Archives: Clifford Oto

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 with the photos taken for the paper and the stories behind them.

Portraits or action

> The high school football season is upon us, and I’ve been shooting photos of some individual players for the upcoming previews of the season. I’ve alternated shooting action shots of some of them and portraits of others. The action photos show what the athletes can do. Their ablilties and athleticsm, their strength and speed, and, through [...]
Posted in Portrait, Sports | Tagged , | 0 Comments

August in review

“‘Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone.” - Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer, The closing of August marks the beginning of the end of an unusually mild Summer. Just a few short weeks and the chill of Fall will be officially upon us. Here are ten [...]
Posted in Month in review | Tagged | 0 Comments

Don’t be messin’ with my light

Photographers can get a little possessive about light. Sometimes they’ll even use a possessive pronoun (”you’re blocking my light”) to describe it. Be it good light or bad light, whether it’s of their own creation or just light that they discovered on location, many photographers consider it theirs. The light at the Plea For Peace Center, [...]
Posted in Column, Music, lighting | Tagged , , | 0 Comments

Separated at birth: Vamos a explorar

Every home Stockton Ports baseball game is kicked off by a child picked out at random to say “play ball” over the PA system. Appropriately, he or she is called the “play ball kid.” They’re all pretty cute, but I usually pass up shooting them because I’m eager for the game to start. At a [...]
Posted in People | Tagged , , | 0 Comments

Night bridge

My family and I take a trip up to my sister-in-law’s house in Southern Oregon once or twice a year. It’s a long 5- to 6-hour drive, so we often stop in Redding, about halfway, to stay the night before continuing on to Oregon the next morning. This year we arrived in Redding about 8 p.m., [...]
Posted in Night, Travel | 0 Comments

Light food

If in real estate the three most important things are location, location location, then in food photography the top three things are, lighting, lighting lighting. Recently my family and I had the opportunity to go to two different restaurants for the first time. Both, like many other eateries, had menus with photographs of the dishes that [...]
Posted in Column, Food, lighting | Tagged | 0 Comments

Ask and ye shall receive

I had an assignment to shoot the Restore the Core exercise class at the Lockeford Springs Golf Club’s pro shop. The class is for new moms who want to tone up a flabby stomach left after child birth. When I got there, instructor Leigh Hobson was just starting the class of about five women, and I [...]
Posted in Children, Feature | Tagged , | 0 Comments

La cage aux tamarins

Sometimes It can be a challenge to get a clear shot through things such as screens, netting or cages, but there are some things that can be done to help mitigate the obstruction. The narrow angle of view and inherent lack of depth of field of a telephoto lens can lessen the effects of an obstruction. [...]
Posted in Animals | Tagged , , | 0 Comments

One is the loneliest number

When I shot Danyel LeDon, 23, and her 6-year-old brother, Michael Tabangcura, having a water balloon fight at Victory Park, only one of the balloons actually exploded. All the others either missed their mark or, if they did find their target, they just bounced off and popped harmlessly on the ground. But I did get [...]
Posted in Enterprise, Feature, Weather | 0 Comments

Dishing the dirt

Fearing that I might get dirty, I wore jeans to the Copper Trails horseback rides in Copperopolis. Those fears were unfounded, I only got a little dust on my shoes. After that assignment was done and I got back to the office, Record photo editor Craig Sanders gave me another assignment for a hearing at [...]
Posted in Enterprise, Miscellaneous | Tagged | 0 Comments
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    Clifford Oto

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    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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