I Just Gotta Get Outta Here

When I was just starting out, ramping up the business side of photography, I experienced the funnier side of what I would later say became my passion for how I saw things. I suppose that I always had it in me from the start, but being a newbie in the sports action shooting thing, I never really thought about things like that, and hadn’t become acquainted with what made me actually love what was coming. I've never been a patient man. I have always been someone who needed instant gratification.

I used to shoot black and white. But when I got out of high school and got away from all those cool, free labs, papers, and chemicals, I realized I was dirt poor and couldn't afford to do that any longer. So I stopped shooting for 30 years. Imagine, not one click for 30 years.

My son started playing high school baseball at LA Baptist HS back in the day, so I bought a digital camera and a cheap lens. I would go to his games that year, shoot some, and I started getting jacked up. And the next year, I bought a better lens. And I started seeing my mentality change from going 100 miles an hour, 24/7, to wanting to get a great image, one that I could hang on my wall.

Every time I go to an event, I don't go just to shoot it. I am always looking for something to hang on my wall. So that's not always easy because it means you have to be more than a photographer. You have to be married to vision. This will ruffle the feathers of many of my fellow photographers, but…. I'm never going to bore you with any kind of technical how-to. I don't care about technical.

It's great to have a camera; it's great to be able to set your settings; it's great to do all those things, and I'm constantly barraged by people who look at my stuff and then want to know what the f-stop was. Yeah. They want to know what the shutter speed was. And I don't memorize all that stuff. Sports and people are all about vision and knowing how light works. I have terabytes of images from more events than I can count. There ain't no way I'm going to be memorizing what the f-stop settings are.

I guess I am veering away from the photo, sorry. This was the day and the shot where I found my legs, so to speak, about environmental portraiture. I am in love with this image because, for the first time ever, I saw exactly what motivated that boy. He was in church at the San Fernando Mission Chapel, at Mass with his family, and all he could think of while he looked out the open side door was going out and playing around in the fountain just outside, in the courtyard.

The light was perfect. The scene couldn’t be more telling, and his expression made it all the more meaningful. Today, I can envision when something is coming, and I am always looking to adjust myself a bit so that the light works. My only regret is that after 20 years, this boy, now an adult, will not have a print of this shot. I would like nothing better than for him or his parents to see it somewhere and for me to have an opportunity to meet him.

Here are a couple more shots where I was able to see something before it happened, and just waited for it to show up.