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On Oct. 27, my good friend Teresa Flores and I co-hosted Big-Kid Playtime Party in the Park, a flash mob event at Cary Park in east-central Fresno. We encouraged participants to re-enact the childhood playtime of their youth in an experiment to see what would happen when we gave “adults” a chance to escape their “adult lives” by making time to be a kid. Activities included tossing around a frisbee and a nerf football, scaling playground equipment, competing in freeze-tag and ultimate frisbee, and running around a lot in general. Counting me and Teresa, eleven people dressed in big-kid clothes came out to play for an hour on a sunny Thursday afternoon for some loosely choreographed playtime.

The playtime flash mob was originally an idea for my Photo 17 black-and-white film class at Fresno City College, in response to an action photography assignment. But I quickly realized that the action during the Big-Kid Playtime Party in the Park was actually way too fast for me to document while also taking accurate exposure notes, framing shots for good lighting, and semi-directing all at the same time. So I ditched the film idea, grabbed my digital camera instead, and made photographs (mostly on shutter-priority settings) for the blog. Teresa, who is one of my favorite mixed-media artists, also shot video of the playtime party for a future post on her blog. She’ll finish her video soon.

While editing my photos for the slideshow, I noticed something: Participants had such huge smiles on their faces during playtime! The best thing I discovered was that people just need a little nudge to remind them how much fun it is to get outside and play. It was a terrific, endearing surprise, and I heard from more than one participant that another Big-Kid Playtime Party in the Park needed to happen in the future.

Late in the designated playtime, a chaotic and amoeba-like contest of ultimate frisbee lingered as the sun went down. I had finished shooting my two rolls of black-and-white film and I had taken more than 150 digital shots. Teresa had finished shooting video footage. She and I stood to the side and watched everyone continue to scramble around in the grass long after we, as directors, had stepped aside. The big kids forgot why they were there, lost in laughter, enjoying their game.

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On the evening of Oct. 13, I met up with my photography instructor, Mr. John Tenney, and three of my classmates for a photo walk at the Big Fresno Fair. I’m in Mr. Tenney’s Photo 17 class this semester at Fresno City College. It’s a black-and-white film class, but on this night we could make photos however we wanted. The photo walk was an optional assignment, a preview of our upcoming class assignment on action photography. Mr. Tenney wanted us to get a chance to practice making action pictures in low-light situations and using only existing light.

I decided to shoot the photo walk on color film and my Pentax K-1000 film camera that I’m using for the class. I shot two rolls of Kodak ISO 400 speed film that I picked up on the clearance rack at Walgreens. I mostly used my 50mm Asahi prime lens, but I did swap it out for the 28mm Asahi wide-angle lens for a few photos of the giant swings. I took the film to Walgreens for processing, where I got a nice compliment from the photo tech when picking up the negatives and CDs.

The best part of the evening, for me, was using a tripod and shutter release cable for longer timed exposures. I’m trying to shoot as much as I can with manual settings this semester, so I can learn and reflect on the relationships between my light meter readings and the shutter, aperture, and film speed settings. So, having the tripod and shutter release cable allowed me to really experiment with longer exposures and different exposure combinations. It was hard lugging around a giant tripod on a hot, crowded night at the fair. But once I saw the incredible depth of field and color quality in the photos I made, I was beyond pleased with the work.

My only regret about the evening was that I didn’t write down my exposure data. I’ve been getting into the habit of taking good notes on which shutter speeds and aperture settings I’m using and why, so I can return to the results of the shoot later and study the results. It would have been nice to go back and review the data and think about my mistakes. Lesson learned for next time.

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On Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, I attended the fourth annual Fresno Urban Sound Experience. This year’s FUSE Fest was expanded into a two-day affair at venues throughout downtown Fresno, courtesy the good folks at Creative Fresno. My wife Tracy went with me on the first night, and we managed to see six bands at three different venues. (Plus, we had a great dinner at Joe’s Steakhouse!) My friend Adam met up with me on the second night, and we caught three bands at two venues.

The FUSE Fest is a real smorgasbord of great local music. Of the nine acts I saw, I was exposed to a big range of diverse acts:
• Brother Luke & The Comrades (indie gospel/folk)
• Dale Stewart Band (electrified political folk)
• Marlson Bruegen (hobo folk, a la Bob Dylan and early Beck)
• Lance Canales & The Flood (“roots stomp”)
• Brian Kenney Fresno (guitar rock, with a little local novelty in the songwriting)
• The Fay Wrays (postpunk/face-obliterating rock)
• It’ll Grow Back (punk)
• Azazel (metal)
• Niilo Smeds Band (indie rock jams)

When attending a rock show, most people tend to concentrate on the singers and their faces. But at the first show I saw, something different caught my eye as I watched Brother Luke & The Comrades perform inside the ballroom at Club One Casino. I snapped a photo of lead singer Luke Freeman’s cuffed-jeans and feet awkwardly perched behind his mic stand, alongside a lone guitar pedal and a half-full beer bottle. That image inspired my shoot for the rest of FUSE Fest 2011.

The photos were made with my iPhone 3GS. They were then cropped and processed in the Instagram app, with filters added. My favorite filter, as you will notice, is the Lomography filter, which always warmly reminds me of my early days of film photography, when I first fell in love with making pictures.

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On the evening of Sunday, Sept. 4, I went on a self-assigned photo walk with my good friend Reaz Mahmood. This was my fourth photo walk, but it was the first time that my photo buddy took the lead in picking the theme. Reaz is a musician, writer, and aspiring filmmaker, and he teaches journalism at Fresno State. He originally suggested making photos of religious iconography in and around Fresno, which seemed like a terrific idea. But we struggled, though, to come up with a suitable location for that theme that would fit the simple boundaries of a two-hour photo walk. So here was Reaz’s suggestion:

“As a backup plan in case the religion thing doesn’t work, think of a parking lot in a place that’s somewhat representative of Fresno, or at least just a large lot with lots of vehicles. It would be interesting to view the lot as ‘aliens’ who try to make meaning of the new place through bumper stickers.”

This photo walk challenged me in numerous ways. First, Reaz insisted that we make photos during the golden hour right before sunset, to get the best lighting. (As a fellow Werner Herzog loyalist, I couldn’t disagree with him.) The temperature in Fresno this day was about 97 degrees right before sunset, so I felt pretty hot and uncomfortable. Second, I knew that whatever parking lot we picked would likely involve us facing security guards, as many people are skittish about having pictures taken of their stuff. Sure enough, a security guard chased us away from our first location at the River Park shopping center and we relocated across the street to the Villagio shopping center. Finally, I knew that I had focused on location and on people in previous photo walks, but this one was focused on a theme. I was surprised, in the end, at the photos we made, as certain mini-themes — sex, fantasy, politics, music, religion, etc. — seemed to emerge.

I shot the bumperstickers with a Pentax K-1000 film camera and an Asahi 50mm f/2 manual focus lens. I exposed two rolls of Fujicolor ISO 200 film that had been sitting in my old photo bag, expired, for more than 10 years. I’m guessing that the expired film is what caused a lot of my photos to end up with such a faded, grainy feeling. Walgreens processed the film and also provided digital files. The photos appear here lightly edited with noise reduction and other modest adjustments in iPhoto.

Reaz wrote a delightful blog post about his experience with the photo walk. It’s terrific. And as always, there are more questions than answers.