30 Days of Dawn, day 14

1.30.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

1.30.09 -- Salinas Valley, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 13

I counted the number of places on my idea list for this project and it wasn't equal to the number of days left, so today I went out and improvised. I also scouted a couple more locations in town. Almost halfway there, and now many of my ideas are an hour's drive away.

1.29.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

1.29.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 12

1.28.09 -- Salinas Valley, Calif.

1.28.09 -- Spreckels, Calif.

1.28.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 11

Last night I was thinking about some of the photos I shot for this project that I haven't posted here. Photos that aren't so sharp and perfect.

Like the photos I shot from my car window while driving on the second day of shooting, like the first blurry exposure of the sky after my camera started working again yesterday, and this four-second handheld exposure of the Moss Landing power plant:

1.25.09 -- Moss Landing, Calif.

There's a little bit of extra feeling in these imperfect frames. They're open to interpretation a bit more.

I resolved to make sure I don't neglect pictures like these.

Which is good, because I don't really like anything I shot at the place I planned to go today, but I do like the one I shot on my way there:

1.27.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 10

This morning I woke to something I haven't seen in my six years of living in California: a frosted-covered windshield. I used my library card as a scraper and headed to the base of my favorite mountain biking trail, where I hoped to catch some frost on the ground.

Instead, my camera caught a bad case of the errors, and for the first critical minutes of my shoot, every time I hit the shutter, a little message informed me that no pictures could be taken. Error 99. Ugh.

I removed the battery, cards, lens, even gave the camera a few solid thwaks, nothing. I finally got it working again by enabling the mirror lockup. Go figure. 

1.26.09 -- Goat Trail

1-26-09 -- Goat Trail

30 Days of Dawn, day 9

Back to Moss Landing today, this time to focus on the electric plant. But I keep getting distracted by the thousands of seagulls there in the morning, angling for a snack from the fishing boats.

1.25.09 -- Moss Landing, Calif.

1.25.09 -- Moss Landing, Calif.

Decipher

1.23.09 -- San Francisco, Calif.

Last night I went to my cousin Chad's art opening at a hallway gallery in San Francisco. Good art, good conversation, good times.

More rain and dreariness here, so I skipped dawn again. I'll be back on it tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm starting to form an idea for my next project.

30 Days of Dawn, day 8

Rain this morning, and thick clouds. I went to this overlook hoping that the sun would peek through a little, but I saw no discernible sunrise.

I was spoiled by crystal clear days for the first week of this project. If it's this dreary tomorrow, I'm skipping.

1.22.09 -- Salinas Valley, Calif.

1.22.09 -- Marina, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 7

It was cloudy this morning, the first time since I started this project. At 6:25 a.m., when I had been seeing that deep royal blue forming in the east, there was only darkness. The sky started turning blue at 6:45, and then all at once.

I had thought I would shoot the brightly lit parking lot of the auto mall against the sky, but all the lights were out. Signs of economic trouble? Or are the lights normally out in the morning? I'm normally not awake to know.

1.21.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

1.21.09 -- accidental exposure

30 Days of Dawn, day 6

1.20.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 5

Yesterday I stumbled across a quote from the late landscape photographer Galen Rowell:

"You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either."

Makes me feel a lot better about waking up today at 6:20 a.m.

1.19.09 -- Elkhorn Slough

1.19.09 -- Moss Landing

30 Days of Dawn, day 4

I'm going to have to start waking up earlier. There simply are not thirty days of great photos within two minutes of my house.

I subtracted ten minutes of sleep this morning and headed to neighboring Spreckels to shoot this iconic corridor.

1.18.09 -- Spreckels, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 3

1.17.09 -- Berkeley, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 2

There's a lot of pressure in making yourself shoot a picture in the early morning every day. Especially when you go to sleep the night before looking at pictures in National Geographic. High standards.

I got in my car this morning and had no clue where I would go. I found myself shooting pictures out my window while driving down Main Street, pointing the camera at the royal blue sky in the distance and hoping.

I found my picture in the agricultural fields just outside of town. Fortunately, today I remembered my tripod -- something I almost never shoot with.

1.16.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

30 Days of Dawn, day 1

I am not a morning person.

So it's with a small amount of masochism that I start my new photo project, tentatively titled 30 Days of Dawn.

The mission is to wake before the sun and go into the world and harvest a picture. For a month. Largely without coffee.

I like the idea of starting my day by being creative. And I like that I have a limited amount of time to accomplish this, because dawn is fleeting.

On Thursday, it was dark at 6:45 a.m., but nearly completely light by 6:58. I was shocked to see how many people actually arrive at work at 7 a.m.

I was not going to work Thursday, because it was my first day of work furlough, a cost-saving measure imposed by my newspaper to hopefully avoid more layoffs.

It was an appropriate day to start a new assignment. Working for myself.

1.15.09 -- Salinas, Calif.

shooting

The dispatcher said a guy was asking for an ambulance. He had just been shot in the head. His buddy, too, in the leg.

I get the address, jump in my car. Sirens. It's my first day back from vacation.

When I get to the neighborhood, I park on a side street. I have the overwhelming feeling that I've parked in that exact same spot before, to cover a shooting in the same neighborhood.

I look up and the truck parked in front of me has a "Loving Salinas" bumper sticker. It's the slogan of a local church's campaign to help make this violent city a little more peaceful. I'm struck by the irony and futility of it all.

The shooting went like this: A couple guys in masks walked into the driveway and shot the two guys. I photograph them, on stretchers, being wheeled to the ambulances. Neighbors are gawking. Everyone looks grave. I have seen this scene over and over and over and over.

I move to the other side of the block, shoot the cops doing their thing. Fill my card. I put in a new one, the last card I filled before I went on vacation. I check the photos before I delete them. They are pictures of another shooting.

Texas

Just got back from the Lone Star State.

Lake Austin.


Death metal pizza.


San Antonio Riverwalk.

Now it's back to work.