I wish I could say that this was taken in the wild in the Sespe River in the Ventura County backcountry, but alas, it was at the Family Fun Fishing Day at Lake Casitas Saturday, where over 1,000 kids were given the opportunity to catch their own rainbow trout. Words and pictures are insufficient to describe the looks on the kids faces, many of them fishing for the first time, when they hooked into fish like this one. 

When I saw Ella Bowen's eye shine brilliantly when she was stretching in her Newbury Park High School World Dance Studies Course I captured the image as fast as I possibly could. When you see something that stands out or grabs your attention you grab your camera and work as fast as you possibly can to capture that moment.
                                

The Ventura County Star is honoring Ventura High School varsity wrestler Isaac Archibeque who came in fourth place in the state championships this season. Shooting a portrait of an athlete in a sport that takes two participants is an interesting challenge. I gravitated toward an image with design using the light that came in through the wrestling room curtains and the bright yellow circles on the floor.  This photo won't make it to the newspaper.  The reproduction quality onto newspaper print will not hold, though it would with a magazine. The inks often blot onto the facing page and the subtle separation that you can see here between his back and the black wall might not make it.  The images that will run, well, check them out, you'll see the difference.

Whenever I have an assignment on one of our beautiful islands, such as Santa Cruz Island, to absorb the scenery is beyond belief. After a healthy hike to the top of the island where the ocean and mainland can be seen it is always the right time to make a picturesque photo.

I took this picture through a beveled window pane of antique styled glass that from the outside has an iridescent quality. I liked the various ways the palm trees appear from the same perspective because of the visual effect the shaped glass has. It shows how many ways light can be bent when it travels through glass. Photographers do this every time they take a picture, although in more subtle ways. Light travels through the glass in a lens. The quality of the glass and and how many elements of glass determine if your subject will be magnified, such as with a telephoto lens, or distorted, so that more can be seen than what your stationary eye can take in at one time, such as with a wide angle lens.  

I will never forget the first fatal accident that I had to shoot as a newspaper photographer. A driver had lost control on a rain slickened Vineyard Avenue in Oxnard and literally wrapped his four door sedan around a telephone pole. The man had been knocked from the driver seat all the way to the back seat on the passenger side of his car. I have since covered numerous tragic events such as Alaska Flight 261 and La Conchita(both times) and fatal accidents and fires. Reporting on these types of stories, although sad, are a necessary part of my job. It is not easy to do, but you reach a certain level of detachment. I've always thought that firefighters, who are among the first responders to such events have to do the same thing to do their job well.