The blog

Ok so my second assignment back from my trip. I had a 30 hr flight coming back from thailand and got in Monday at around 6pm. Everything inside of me was telling me not to go into work on Tuesday but I did anyways. Good thing too because at the last minute on Tuesday I got the go ahead to shoot this assignment on Wednesday. And although I almost died of exhaustion driving home tuesday, it was worth it. This funeral is covering Jesus “Chuy” Campos who was recently shot and killed in his restaurant off of International during a robbery. He was a total stand up guy and the murder was a total tragedy. His son is seen in most of the photos. The one where he is smiling is worth a write. I was watching a show just last night on Pete Souza, the white house chief photographer and for all purposes, the luckiest man alive. I was just noticing the way he shoots and how much he focuses on capturing the right moment. I know that sounds obvious, but its sometime hard to do so when things are starting to get predictable. The procession was nearly 30min, so a lot of the same photographs, but i kept on putting Petes work in mind and knowing that if I can get a regular shot with great timing, something that shows the proper emotion of the day, then its better than a shot with fantastic composition but no sense of feeling…thats what i feel i got with that shot. So for that 2 hr assignment he smiled only twice, and i got both of em, and thats why i make the big bucks, haha. Also the light was perfect

Photo of la Barbara Boxer in SF.

Ok so new stuff as always. I just came back from a trip to Thailand, these photos are the ones i took on assignment before my trip. fast forward 2 weeks later and I have soo much editing to do.

Odell Sylvester, 86 years old, first African American police cheif deputy of the Berkeley police department.

Bluesman Ronnie Stewart

So very interesting assignment today. This was my first breaking news story so I got super excited. Ray was around and so we went out and shot it together. As we got there, he dropped me off and I went shooting while he parked, which was a good thing photo wise. It was a pretty brutal crash. A guy stole a car, ran into another car that was filled with 5 people, 4 under the age on 19. No one was killed but it seems a 2 were critically injured. I was a bit confused on how to shoot since its quite a sensitive issue, taking photographs like this. I didn’t want to be the dick photographer taking shots of suffering for the sake of taking shots of suffering, but at the same time I personally feel its pretty important to create powerful images out of situations like this, cause it happened and its our job to report what happened and in all honesty, its a part of life that really shouldn’t be hidden or covered just because its sensitive. . So I think in this sense, i went for power instead of drama. So heres what I took.

the decisive moment