Santa Cruz On A Cloudy Day

El Niño is finally promising rain for California. With the rain come wind and dark skies. But no one is complaining.

The drive south from Poplar Beach to Santa Cruz is picturesque. The cliffs are majestic and the Pacific Ocean incessantly pushes its waves against these cliffs. The travel rods are serpentine and perfect for a drive in a two-seat convertible roadster.

Hundreds of cars were parked along the road with folks taking pictures of waves and beaches. That is not what a street photographer does, so I kept on driving to Santa Cruz looking for humans!

As one gets close to Santa Cruz, the waves seem to swell bigger and the sound of these crushing against the rocks much louder. No wonder that it is one of the most popular areas for wave surfers. In fact the Santa Cruz Surfing Club is among the first in California introduced to the region by students from Hawaiian Islands who migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area for jobs or education.

… I took two 1970s Nikkor lenses with me – a 105mm and a 180mm.  Both open down to 2.5 or 2.8 and given the cloudy skies I wanted fast lenses.

I parked my car and a quick look over the cliff uncovered a small bay full of seals.  I looked through the 180mm lens to realize that these were wave surfers waiting patiently for a good swell.

I waited as well. Wanted to catch the good wave through my lens. After about 10 minutes of wait I became impatient and decided to be happy with a small wave.

Ok, that was enough wave and rock for me—wanted to get into the crowd and catch a few moments on the boardwalk.

This artist made imaginary trees out of scrap wiring and anything shiny to shape into leaves. I opened the 105mm lens wide and wanted a creamy background.

The boardwalk is secured with a sturdy steel fence. Yet many jump over it to get closer to the edge of the high cliffs. I wanted to capture the eclectic behavior on the boardwalk along with surfers jumping the fence to get closer to the ocean.

But the call of the ocean seems to be for everyone –even a Golden retriever was tempted to jump the fence!

Talking about dogs, I was surprised at the effort some folks took to clean their dog before getting into the car. After all this is California!

After couple hours of walking around, I got that one picture that makes any of my street outings worthwhile. Atop a high cliff, about 300 meters away, I saw a fisherman, a young lady and a surfer next to each other. Strange composition. Yet, what I thought as I looked through the telephoto lens was three human shapes, on a cliff, looking at the tumultuous Pacific Ocean. But they look at it differently, with a totally different body language. Here is what I saw with the naked eye:

And here is the view though my telephoto:

… On my way back along the coast of the Monterey Bay, when fast Tesla cars were passing me from the right and from the left, I was wondering how many surfers caught the wave they hoped for; and if fishermen took home rockfish or lingcod.  But most importantly, if the lady on the edge of that cliff had a pleasant daydream.

January 31, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Portable Toilets

There are moments when a street photographer gets someone, a total stranger, to willingly help with a photo. No need to plan for the shot – a person just decides to make that shot mean more than it was originally intended.

I was walking on a back street of Palo Alto, California when I saw a portable toilet in front of a home under renovation. Nothing new there, except that I had not seen a portable toilet called “Honey Bucket”! So, I was planning to take a photo so I can research and learn about this specific toilet. 

Just as I was about to depress the shutter, a worker voluntarily walked into the frame and assumed the appropriate position to explain the toilet! (See bottom corner on right of frame.)

Perfect. Now I had a photo to use with my story.

… I have seen and used bucket toilets in areas of the world when in disaster or war zones. When there is no water to flush toilets or no sewer systems, a bucket toilet makes a lot of sense. In fact, my search showed that there are still a number of countries where bucket toilets are used. Among them Namibia, Ghana, and Kenya. It is not only an issue of sewer system availability only, but also of ambient temperatures. For example I have seen outhouses in Baltic and Easter European countries, but sometimes even outhouses are difficult to build or maintain. That is why one still finds bucket toilets in Alaskan rural villages such as those in the Bethel area of the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta.

Perhaps portable toilets in Alaska will disappear with climate change, soon… After all the British pail closets are now part of the 20th century history. So will soon be, according to the government plan, the use of “bucket systems” in the Free State, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces of South Africa.

… So, I had seen portable toilets called “Porta-Potty” on the East Cost of the US; “Port-a-John” in the Midwest; but it was the first time I see a “Honey Bucket.”  Probably my favorite remains the so much more sophisticated “Portaloo” in the UK!

And I smiled when I recalled the writing on the loo door of a bar in Edinburgh that read:

                                  “The Place Where Even Kings Must Go on Foot”

January 28, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Tehachapi and Surrounding Ghost Towns, California

On a recent trip to Southern California, I made a discovery: there are hundreds, even thousands of “Ghost Towns” in America. A ghost town is an abandoned town because for one reason or another there were no more people living in these towns.

This discovery came when driving on Route 58 going to Bakersfield for an overnight stop.  Route 14 intersects Route 58 near the town of Mojave and runs north. It is there that I learned about a number of ghost towns hardly 30 miles north of Mojave.  These towns abandoned and in decay date back to the early 1900s and were built as glorified camps during the California Gold Rush, or to store building materials for the California Aqueduct, and anything in between.  All these towns were built next to train tracks, and had saloons, brothels and a General Store.

Ghost Towns can be visited if one is interested in history and photography. Some of the towns near Route 14 North are Brown, Leliter, Freeman, Goler, Havila and Silver City to name a few. Often there is little to see, but other times what one cannot see can be dangerous! Consider the ghost town of Silver Queen off of Route 14, just south of Mojave city. It is a town where toxic chemicals have been dumped seemingly in a hap hazardous way. One is warned about toxic chemicals in pits and buckets that are either not covered or questionably sealed. One can see large (50 gallon) drums here and there still full of toxic chemicals. In fact, a website describing Silver Queen recommends NOT traveling there with children…! Hmm.

Other Ghost Towns have a very unique history. Take the town of Allensworth founded in 1908 by a former slave who reached the rank of colonel in the US military. The town was built and financed by African Americans with the goal that its 300 residents will be an example of a population living with self-respect. Allensworth became a ghost town when its water table dropped drastically and its residents left town. Today Allensworth is a state park with a few blocks of the old town still standing.

… On the way to Bakersfield, there is the town to Tehachapi. It is not a ghost town but a bucolic area on the train line. It was a cold January day with heavy fog covering the mountain tops that surround the town.

There are few attractions in town one of them is Kronen’s German Bakery. On that humid, cold evening the aroma of bread, especially crusty rye, was most welcoming.  The sandwiches are sized to satisfy the hunger of a lumberjack, and the many varieties of German beer to quench any thirst.  One should not leave the bakery without a bag of warm Brötchen, the crusty German breakfast rolls.

The train passes regularly by and thru Tehachapi. I wanted to capture both the active moment of the train passing by and the relative loneliness of this town. So, put my 1970s Nikkor 105mm lens through the fence next to the train lines hoping for the contrast. 

And it happened when a railroad worker walked over the tracks after the train passed. I would not have hoped for anything better than loud-mouth Raven that descended upon the tracks as the employee passed by surrounded by the fog coming down the mountains.

Finally, it seems the other major attraction of Tehachapi is an Ostrich farm.  There were plenty of signs in the street (“street” not “streets” as the town is rather small…).

Even the local burger joint advertised ostrich meat. I recalled my last experience with the overcooked ostrich meat that required a wolf’s teeth to cut through, and stayed away from that restaurant….

So, Ghost Towns are dilapidated, decaying towns from the past century across California and the rest of the US. Some are kept in better shape – the most famous is Bodie, in California. There are more than 200 original and perfectly preserved structures still standing from this town built in 1859. These structures include a schoolhouse, a jail, and of course a saloon. Bodie had a population of 10,000 during the 1880s. But with the Gold Rush coming to an end, Bodie was a ghost town by 1942.

… My mother used to say “Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.” So, if history regarding Ghost Towns will repeat itself, where will it be?

And I could not recall a Forbes article from December 5, 2014 where a statement by Bill Gates was discussed.  Gates reported that between 2011 and 2013, China consumed 6.6 gigatons of concrete – that’s more than the U.S. used in the entire 20th century. Indeed, that trend seems to continue, as China’s official news agency Xinhua reported that urban planning in China has for goal to provide housing for 3.4 billion people.

But… since the present population of China is only 1.4 billion, will building housing for 2 more billion people result in building new age Ghost Towns? 

Or perhaps China knows something we do not.

January 25, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

The Art of Seeing and Adaptive Choice of Stimuli

It is said that to see is to discriminate an object against its background given the special arrangement of light.  We use our eyes to imprint upon our physical (retina), emotional (readiness to notice pleasant or morose stimuli) and predisposing (previous experience, culture, etc) dimensions. It all ends up in seeing as a translation of sheer looking.

It may be easier to see an unusual stimulus than it is to tease one out of an ordinary background. Yet, what surprises us all is to find that unusual arrangement or stimulus in what we took for granted. That element of discovery is what I believe is a prerequisite for artfulness and perhaps artistic interpretation.

Photography seems most conveniently conducive to that discrimination of stimuli (objects, forms, even movement) within a given spatial arrangement of light. Technically it is called our visual resolution. And when that resolution leads to the identification of stimuli, it is called our visual acuity. All of us have and use our capacity of resolution and acuity to various degrees when looking and interpreting what we looked at (seeing). What makes some of us be photographers is, in part, our conscientious pursuit of seeing what escaped to the casual looker. And of course, to have the reflexes of clicking at the appropriate moment before the stimulus or the spatial background of light change taking the story away or creating a new story for which we were not ready. I call this adaptive choice of stimuli as we adapt our resolution and acuity to the story of the moment and are ready to capture it. That happens in a millisecond and if the story changes, our previous adaptation may not be adequate or appropriate to capture the new story. That is how we miss pictures.

All this ends up in a photograph. And for those who still use film and mechanical cameras, all this ends up as that never predictable moment when in the darkroom and under a faint amber light, that captured moment comes alive, gradient by gradient, in the developing tray.

Here are some examples of seeing:

      A.       Parachute  

I was walking in the street with my dog. He is now older and takes his time sniffing every stone and every bush. That gives me time to look around and even to take photographs without being pulled holding his leash!

As he was carefully sniffing the base of a tree, I looked up and saw a shape “out of place”. It was a conical shape, probably paper, and the sun was shining through it. It was about 15 feet away and I could not see much detail, but my 1970s Nikkor 105mm helped me see a less than one inch plastic soldier stuck on a tree branch. The conical shape was the parachute hanging upside down.

Why did I notice this toy which I assumed belonged to a boy and was taken away from him by the wind? Was it the light shining through it making it different from the few dead leaves still on the tree? Or was it my ever present interest in discovering what surprises the ordinary environment keeps for us?

      B.           Phone

Someone had compiled a timeframe in this creative expression. It was the timeframe of communication and all he or she needed was an empty tin can and a string. Yet, the story was there and the message quite clear. After taking a photo, I stood there watching the hundreds of people pass by. Not a single one looked at the red public phone…..

      C.          Shapes and a Smoke

I took this one with a 180mm telephoto lens. I needed the compression of the frame a telephoto gives. I immediately saw all the various shapes, angles, and texture harmoniously coexisting. And the man having a smoke seems to add a dimension of comfort with the environment.

So, is there an art of seeing?  I believe so, but it will not translate into an artful translation unless we place what we see within a story many others would identify with and understand.

January 17, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Street Talk

My dog loves snow. So, when the street turned white, he went to the door, looked at me and barked.

… Few people were walking around in the town center this Sunday noon. It was cold, a bit windy and the snow steady. We walked our usual path, met dogs we know and dogs we had not met before. Most of the stores were open but the ice cream parlor was closed. The street lights change faster on Sundays so we crossed the streets without much wait.

Contrary to his habit, my dog took a side street as if to break the monotony of the walk. As we passed next to a parked car, the driver, a lady with shiny silver hair, lowered her window and blew the horn. 

I walked toward her.

“Did Rose’s restaurant change its name?”

“Rose’s closed more than a year ago” I replied.

“Oh, we have not been here for longer than a year-- I wanted to get a gift certificate for a friend.”

As I came close to her window I saw that the older man in the passenger seat was looking straight in front of him, and that his left arm was continuously shaking. He did not look at me or did not realize that I was there.

“We live in the assisted living outside town, do you know where that is?”

I did know about that community, as it is the only one around.

“What is your dog’s name?”

“Rocky.”

She opened her door and Rocky gently extended his neck to get a rub behind the ears.

“We came from Massachusetts 30 years ago. We had big dogs then. Now one is only allowed small dogs in the assisted living community.”

As she opened her door I saw she was wearing impeccably shiny black high boots, a woolen skirt, and a jacket with a big broche.  “Very European” I thought.

“You live around here?” she asked.

“A few miles away. Rocky likes to walk the city center.”

“You still work?” she asked.

I smiled.

“No” I said. “I am experimenting with retirement.”

“You are too young for retirement!” she exclaimed. “My son is 70 years old and still working.”

By now Rocky was mostly covered in a thin white layer and sitting calmly next to her car.

She asked my name.

“Armenian? I had Armenian friends in Massachussetts. I am Sicillian. My father came to this country in the 1800s.”

She had the loveliest smile and a spark in her eyes. Her silver hair was perfectly cut and she was a true contrast with everyone else passing by wearing shapeless snow caps and Chinese-made ski jackets.

“You have a wife?” she asked.

Then smiled and said:

“You tell her that a 96 year old woman flirted with you this morning.”

Ninety-six!

“I will tell her it was a 50 year old lady” I replied.

Another smile and she put her car in reverse.

As I wished her a good day, she almost whispered:

“Stay away from harm’s way, young man.”

… I did not have my camera with me this morning, but the classy outfit and smile of the 96-year old Sicillian woman will remain with me.

January 10, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Rio Paraguay, Partagas and Hope for Better Live

“All the hotels I stayed in had B&W TV that worked only when you inserted pocket change into a slot” I remember her saying when we first met. “This hotel you are staying in looks like a palace.”

It was in 1996, two years before Argentina’s financial crisis when I got involved in a public health project in Buenos Aires.

Over the next two years I learned about a pace of life that I once knew, had forgotten, but did not recall how sweet it was.  It was also a pace of life that could not keep step with global trends. Yet, when I look back two decades, I recall moments when I felt as if time had stopped and all my senses were at their zenith.

“You know about our Tango and wines, but you have to learn about the kids drifting on Rio Paraguay hoping for a better life in Argentina. You cannot understand our public health needs unless you ride in a pirogue on that river.”

Which I did, for a short distance, to learn more about parasitic diseases, tuberculosis, and orphans. Then it was the ride back to Buenos Aires and all the glamour of Paris and Prague that it offered.

In 1998 the financial crisis started in Argentina and the project was halted.

… It is raining and cold today in the high desert of Arizona. I looked at my computer screen for a long while wondering what feelings this day relates to memories of other places. And for a strange reason, I found myself in Buenos Aires, Café Tortoni, Av de Mayo, having lunch.

“200 grams of meat, red wine and a Cuban Partagas. That is the luxury I have” she had told me.

And on this rainy day, I wonder if she stayed at the Ministry of Health, continued the project, and took care of the orphans crossing the Rio Paraguay.

About the photograph: It was taken during a field trip to Peru and Argentina circa 1997.

January 5, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016