Looking down from the lookout point, I saw this blue framed bridge, stretching across a wash above the various bushes. I just thought, "That would make a cool picture." So I pulled the old, hand-me-down, iPhone 5 out of my backpack. It' s not activated, so it's basically a camera to me, a camera and a clock. That's all I use it for, most of the time. Anyhow, I snapped this photo, and the urge to take more photos caught me. So I just took my time, meandering through the lower level of the art park, snapping photos of every scene that I found interesting. I was alone,didn't have to be anywhere at a certain time, and just had fun with it. This was by no means any great epic adventure. But little "photo snapping adventures" are something anyone can do. They tend to clear your head, get your mind off the troubles of the day, and get you in a better mood. That's part of the idea behind this blog and my Pinterest page of the same name. Life is stressful, and often frustrating. Taking a little time to have a little adventure of some sort is good for the soul. And you'll probably wind up with some cool photos for Instagram, or you other social media. Maybe even to print and hang on the wall.
I got interested in photography in the 9th grade, 1980, the year I lived in Carlsbad, New Mexico. That was the first year I went to a school that had classes for "Gifted Kids." I think that's what they called them. Before AP college course classes in high school started, schools made some hard classes to keep the smart kids from getting so bored. So, I somehow decided taking high school senior level physics as a 9th grader was a good idea. I sucked at it. I squeaked out a B-C average, I think, but it was hard.
On the bright side, a couple weeks of the class was dedicated to shooting photos, so we could learn about light, and how images are made on film and then transferred onto photo paper. All of that is physics related. Then we actually developed black & white photos. That was cool. We had to go shoot some photos as homework. Our teacher, whose name I forget, told us there were two main ways to learn to shoot better photos. One was to pay $100 or so and take a photography course at the local community college or somewhere. The other way was to learn some basics (Rule of thirds, using foreground, basic composition ideas), and then to spend $100 on film, and just try to make every photo a little bit better than the last one. That idea stuck with me. While I couldn't shoot tons of photos in those days of expensive film, I did get to work making the most of my Kodak 110 Instamatic. I've been interested in shooting photos ever since, which is about 40 years now.
While I never got good at the more technical aspects of photography, like actually using a light meter correctly back then, or studio lights and highly technical cameras, I have been looking through big photo books, and shooting photos on a regular basis, since. I'm more about making a cool image out of what's around, or capturing a cool moment, like with BMX and skating.
Now, with the internet and social media,
everyone takes tons of photos, and most of them still suck. But between my zines, magazines, and blogs, I've had a bunch published here and there, and have captured really cool shots now and then. So here are the shots from my little photo snapping adventure through the lower part of the art park area, at the Newport Beach Civic Center. It parallels Avocado street, and is located at 100 Civic Center Drive, Newport Beach, California. It's about a block or two south of Fashion Island Mall.
Straight rails along the crooked path of life...
I just looked this place up on Google Maps, to get the address for the Civic Center. The rabbit circle in this photo is actually called "Bunnyhenge." Seriously. You can actually find it by searching "Bunnyhenge" on Google maps.
