Don't mess with Diablo

So some wacko from Oakley with an axe to grind is trying to change the name of Mount Diablo. Seems his religious beliefs are offended by the name. Give me a break.

The name of the mountain goes back to an incident with the Miwok Indians. As recounted by the Save Mount Diablo organization:

"On a boggy day in 1806 a detachment of Spanish soldiers apprehended a band of Bay Miwok Indians in a marsh at the foot of a solitary California mountain. ..the Spaniards detained them in a nearby thicket as night fell. ....The next morning the soldiers woke in a dawn steam thick enough to blank the big mountain from sight. They found themselves bereft of their errant mission-folk .... Bedeviled as they were, they forswore the place Monte Del Diablo, Thicket of the Devil, and for years the name lingered like a fog over that marsh. Then when the English-speaking settlers arrived, the Spanish Monte was taken for Mountain and was thought to refer to the twin-shouldered mass looming nearby. So the mountain became Mount Diablo, made to bear an unholy namesake."

Now this religous zealot is trying to take away the name because it offends him. Whah! Even worse he wants to rename it to Mount Regan, which actually is pretty close to still calling it Mount Diablo.

Anyone wanting to help keep the mountain's history and namesake alive can order a t-shirt with a large portion of the proceeds going to Save Mount Diablo.

Last dance

It was with some sadness that I photographed what could be the last time the Poet Christian School’s dance company getting ready for their annual performance. The school’s dance program and other art classes are on the chopping block due to budget cuts.





I have been impressed every year I see them ready for their show. Seeing them rehearse in costume under the lights of the Grand Theatre stage it is easy to forget these are elementary school students. I will hate to see the program go away, the students and teachers have done a fantastic job and it will be a shame to see so much talent go to waste.

Gutter talk

One of the rules of news photography is always wear clean socks on assignment; you never know when you are going to have to take your shoes off.

Take for instance the bowling alley assignment from last week. I was assigned a story about the 50th anniversary of the Tracy Bowl now called West Valley Bowl. I got the traditional standing-with-the-bowling-balls photo but I wanted something a little more dramatic. I could photograph them bowling but it looks boring from behind. I need to get out on the lanes.

Bowling alleys oil their lanes pretty heavily so I decided to make my way along the gutter. My plan was to head in a five or six feet and get a low angle view of the bowler releasing the ball. First thing I noticed is they were right, the lanes are slippery and very cold. So hunched down in the gutter I made a few test frames to check exposure and focus and had him roll away.

It is kind of strange to see a 16-pound ball kind of flash by your head. It wasn’t that close but it seems to be and the noise the ball makes landing near me is a little unnerving. The crack of the ball on wood and the shudder is a little disconcerting.

A couple of tries and I was happy with the composition of ball and bowler. I could have used a little more shutter speed to make the ball a little clearer as it sailed past me but I was happy with the results. The bowler asked me if he need to do anything special. I had one request, no gutter balls please.

Landing zone

This could have gotten interesting. While I was photographing an air ambulance arrive at the crash scene last Friday a driver tried to drive through the scene but was stopped short of the helicopters landing zone. I could just see him starting to make his way through to my left. The landing was almost aborted but it did make it down safely on 11th Street. You would think the driver would have given the right of way to the helicopter but I guess he was in a hurry.

Exit exam

I found this sign on one of the doors of Tracy High’s Swenson Gym while covering a basketball game tonight. What bothers me the most is Tracy High is a California Distinguished School.

The red flashlight

On assignment today I came across a red Maglight flashlight that had been placed carefully on a set of stairs. I asked around and nobody knew where it came from only that it had been there three or four days. It sort of reminded me of the red coat I found left on the trail at Mount Diablo last year. I thought about calling the police to report a suspicious flashlight, maybe they would bring the bomb squad down again and blow it up. Now that would be too cool!

Motivational mail

Eating disorder

The first step is admitting you have an eating problem

Air time

I took this weather photo the other day ate Veteran's Neighborhood Park as storm clouds rolled in above Tracy. I used a 16-25 mm wide angle lens held down low to get a dramtaic sky in the picture.

Nummi nonsense

I have dealt with some paranoid subjects before but Tuesday’s assignment takes the cake. Paranoid is most likely an understatement. Think more militant camp, anti-journalist, angry xenophobes. That’s how I would describe my assignment at Nummi in Fremont.

We were working on a story about the pending closure of the Nummi auto plant in Fremont which has a large portion of its 4,500 strong workforce from Tracy. The plant’s closure will leave many unemployed and put more local families into a struggle.

So right off the bat I knew the great folks at Nummi wouldn’t be rolling out the welcome mat for us. I thought the greeting would be more like barbed wire and guard dogs. I was right. After the drive to Fremont we were greeted with the “you can’t be here” speech from the guard at the entrance which included the private road that surrounds the massive plant just off the freeway. The best option I was told was to park on the freeway and shoot across.

I had looked at pictures of the plant on the web and I now realize why they are all views of the building from a distance. They are extremely tight with their security and their privacy so I headed up on the freeway looking for the best view. I don’t really enjoy stopping on a freeway onramp to take pictures but I had enough of a shoulder to shoot from safely with out being smashed by an oncoming truck.


The best photos of the day were accidental as I got a little lost looking for the right freeway ramp to head home. I ended up going back into Fremont where the reporter and I saw a sign along the road about the Nummi plant closure. I was just going to get a photo of the sign when we realized it was in front of the United Auto Workers union hall across the street from the plant. A quick trip inside and we found a worker there from Tracy who agreed to be in a photo. That picture turned out to be the cover of the newspaper.

So a lot of driving around aimlessly around an auto plant which didn’t want us there turned out the best photos from nowhere near it. Just another day on the photo desk.

Rule #32: Enjoy the Little Things

So there I am standing in the cold leaning on a telephone pole waiting for the post office to explode. I knew it wasn't going to explode, but maybe it could, you know maybe somehow but I knew it wouldn't.

I was just getting ready for a cup of coffee at work when somebody said there was trouble at the Tracy post office on 9th Street. I took a quick peek down an alley leading to their parking lot and saw crime scene tape and a squad car. That's a bad sign.

I headed over and was told a suspicious package with no label was on the post office delivery dock at the rear of the post office. Employees had been evacuated and the bomb squad was on its way. Now I knew these things are 99% of the time nothing, but in these days it is err on the side of caution. So I would be in a hurry up and wait mode in the cold. I did shoot off a couple of quick shots of the scene to upload to the web. I guessed at about what time the sheriff department bomb squad would arrive and headed back out.

There is nothing more glamorous than standing behind a police line waiting for action. Something, anything that I can take a picture of. It is just stand there and make chitchat with the police officer guarding the alley entrance to the post office. We were talking about fancy high school gyms when the bomb squad got busy. Two deputies approached the dock entrance in the bomb helmets (I wanted the full suit like in the Hurt Locker dammit!)carrying a spool of wire. Something was going to go boom. The plan I was told was they were going to blow up the suspicious box.
With a call of "Fire in the hole!" those of us who braved the cold were rewarded with a pretty cool explosion. I was thinking it would sound like a firecracker going off but it was louder a lot louder. A nearby resident uttered an "Oh shit" when the bang went off and a crowd gathered at the entrance to the alley.

I looked at the officer and said " I bet right now the newsroom is probably wondering what the f__k just happened." Seconds later my cell rang as I debated not answering and letting them think I had been killed in the blast. Yeah I have a sense of humor.

So after the detonation crews checked the box remains only to discover they had contained a fitness push up handle bars, now somewhat used and slightly scratched. OK now heavily used and you would have to take the "like new" off the E-Bay listing for them.

So what could have been a dangerous scene turned into a kind of funny story. No one hurt except for the push bars and I got to hear a pretty cool explosion. And somewhere in the world some fat guy is screaming into his telephone at the customer service desk because his Flab-O-Matic 3000 never arrived and sure enough they charged his credit card for the purchase. It's the little things in life you have to enjoy no matter where you find them.

Out of sight

There was some discussion in the newsroom about which photo to use in the story of the city cracking down on pandhandlers.


Most of the pandhandlers for the story were homeless people and the question came up whether to photograph their faces. Since they are standing in a public place and calling attention to themseleves any right to privacy argument doesn't apply. It became more of a sensitivity issue. I got shots of both their faces and just close ups of the signs they held.

Either picture has their merits but maybe the one without a face shows the issue of them being a faceless member of the community. I was kind of torn, I thought either photo could work but I didn't think we should reject the photos that showed their faces just because we could tell who they were.

Germ warfare

This is a sign when coworkers are tired of your continuous coughing, sneezing and hacking in the newsroom from the cold I have had for the past three days.

How now, a rat?

Ok so this guy probably won't be pet of the week. Oddly enough he is avaialbale for adoption at the Tracy Animal Shelter.



I snapped this guy's photo today as he played inside his little plastic tunnel. It must remind him of a sewer pipe or something. I thought it was kind of strange that they keep him in the cat kennel room. All those hungry eyes just staring at him all day long.

Goundhog Day!

I found this listing in the Unofficial Groundhogese Dictionary

High Muckatymuck: The one cameraman who arrives at the Knob at 3 a.m. and is lucky enough to secure the highest perch in the elm tree directly above the proceedings, leading to name calling and face-making by other not-so-luck photographers.


I like that!