I was away for four days last week, January 27-30. I went to San Diego to attend the PPC (Professional Photographers of California) Quarterly meeting and to assist with the PPA Regional & PPC print Competition. As President of my local affiliate I needed to attended the meetings, which did provide some good information that will be useful for future events. I also volunteered to assist on the print competition crew. Assisting and or attending any print competition is a good way learn how to better your prints for not only competition but for your clients too. I entered four prints in the competition, three of which I had entered locally this past year and one from the previous year. I’m very happy with the results that I got overall. I qualified to earn three PPA merits for this years International Print Competition. The prints I entered and their scores are as follows: Mythical Oak - 89; My Father’s Passion -80; Peaceful Reflection -80; In it’s Hay Day -77. Here are the prints as they were presented for competition (except without my logo).

I happen to belong to a few professional photography associations ranging from the local level up to national. The associations that I’m a member of are Professional Photographers of Santa Clara Valley (PPSCV), Professional Photographers of California (PPC) and Professional Photographers of America (PPA). I’ve been on the board of the local group for a few years in different capacities, including a board member, Vice-President (last year), and President this year. I’ve also been the webmaster for the Santa Clara Valley group.

At the local level we have print competitions about six to eight times a year and an annual one in December where we can submit up six of our top prints from that year. In the previous Year End competitions I’ve entered I’ve placed as high as third with one of the prints. At our January meeting we had our Awards ceremony for Year End Print competition and or our Outstanding Member of the Year. This year I was fortunate and won the Print of the Year Award with the print titled “Mythical Oak”.

You can view a different version, a high contrast black and white, of this same tree in the More Places and Happenings post. I actually have done up a series on this oak trying different effects and image manipulations. I enjoyed the creative process and the the results I was getting.

The week of January 28th I’ll have this print, and three other different prints, in the PPA Regional (Western States) and the PPC Print Competition. I’m looking forward to helping out the at the print comp and hearing the scores and comments from the judges as the prints are judged.

As the end of the year came and went there were more celebrations and special moments. The weekend leading up to Thanksgiving I traveled to a small town west of Fresno in the Central Valley to visit with a friend that I had not seen since she moved to Arizona before my moving to Sunnyvale in 2001. She was there to visit one of her sons for the holiday. Though the visit was not that long it was good to have taken the time to do it.

I got to help celebrate the youngest granddaughter’s birthday by being there and taking some photos of gift opening. Later that morning as some of the neighborhood kids were out and about coming over to play and be kids I set up a place to photograph the kids in the garage. It was fun.

On returning to Sunnyvale there were more visitations happening and special moments throughout the Thanksgiving Holiday. One young boy lost one of his front teeth. It was the forth tooth that week he had lost, A very busy tooth fairy in that house! I also went out and experimented a little photographing flowers being backlit by the sun. No I did not look through the viewfinder, I used the shadow as a guide for when to release the shutter.

During the first week of December I was off to Santa Rosa to visit with fellow photographers and help out with some technical stuff related to color management. I also helped out with getting the Christmas tree moved into the house, set up and the lights strung on it. It was not an easy task. The tree was a 6-7 year old giant sequoia that by one estimate weighed in the area of 350lbs or more and was over fourteen feet tall. As you can see below it was one heck of a tree!

For Christmas Day I got to relax. I even was able to sit out in the yard and soak up a little bit of the winter sun. (with no breeze to speak of it was actually rather nice to feel the warming rays of the sun on my skin)

I finished out the year with some photography. Kamran who owns and runs Picture 2000, the studio that I’ve been shooting for this year, had me photograph his son’s Bar Mitzvah rehearsal and do some family group photos. Then on the last Saturday of the year I assisted and second shot for John of JP Impressions in San Jose. We started on a dreary afternoon at the Marines Memorial Hotel in San Francisco for the getting ready shots then of to St. Ignatius Church for the ceremony. This is a beautiful church and with the Holiday decorations still out for the ceremony it was spectacular. Here are a few from the church:

Birthdays started the New Year. The first one that I helped celebrate was for Bobby. Bobby is one of the sons of Angela who I wrote about in the previous blog entry where I helped celebrate and photograph her 80th birthday gathering back in October. The following day was my Brother’s birthday. This year to be different I decided to make him a simple card, it was in the tradition of a young child writing outlined letters and coloring them in like one’s to hang on the fridge. I felt that this would be more personal then buying one, signing it and dropping it in the mail. Here are couple shots from Bobby’s party.