Stunning. Click the photo to see it full size. View his portfolio here.

Children in the tenement district, Brockton, Mass. 1940. Photo is by Jack Delano and is from the Library of Congress archive.

Four inches of rain fell in Simi Valley and about 11 inches in the Topa Topa mountains, visible here from the Reagan Library.

We’re taking a couple days vacation in central California, staying in Cambria and exploring the wild places. Every year a colony of elephant seals returns to a beach just north of San Simeon where they give birth, fight, nurse their young, fight, mate, fight, wean their young, fight again and then return to the sea for another season.

There’s a very nice boardwalk set up for watching all this unfold. However, as a photographer, it gets old shooting from the same angle, so I was happy to learn that some 13 miles of coastline previously owned by the Heart Corporation was now state property. Just a few miles south is a section of beach beloved by kite surfers, which, in elephant seal season, becomes known as “losers beach” because this is where males go when they learn they lack the right stuff to be an alpha male.

Access to this beach is fenced off, but it’s not illegal to go there. Nonetheless, the state assigns someone from the park service to convince you otherwise. This morning I was warned not to mess with the elephant seals (good advice) and that if I did, they’d sic a ranger on me. I was also told that if I got bitten by an elephant seal, the state of California would not be responsible. “What if I skin my knee?” I asked, “Will the governor come put a bandaid on my boo boo?” Actually, I didn’t think of that retort until much later.

So there I was on a gorgeous beach, shooting tidepools and other natural wonders, when a hefty male approached from the sea. They don’t move fast, but they can weigh 5,000 pounds. Nothing to trifle with. I was shooting with a telephoto, so I wasn’t that close. But I was watching that big fella through the long lens, so it seemed close. I got out of the way. Reviewing the images on my computer, I noticed his hot, steaming breath.

I shot some video. If it comes out, I’ll put up some clips of the babies nursing and calling their moms — it’s sweet stuff. The pups weigh 80 pounds at birth and gain 10 pounds a day for the next four months until they’re weaned. Mother’s milk in this case is as thick as mayonnaise and impossible for the babies to suckle out, so the mother actually pumps it out.

Okay class, our nature lesson for the day is over. Go watch some football.

More on the elephant seals here.

Not quite the view Napoleon’s troops got way back when. Click the link for more.

HT: Tigerhawk.

Civil War enthusiasts this weekend will get a rare glimpse at what a handful of scholars are calling the most significant find of its kind in generations: a pair of stereoscopic photos, purportedly of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg before he delivered his famous address.

Photos of Lincoln are incredibly rare; only about 130 exist. Until now, there was only one known photo of the 16th president at Gettysburg — sitting in a crowd of dignitaries on Nov. 19, 1863, just after delivering the legendary speech.

Photo here.

The view from my driveway this morning.

…as early as the 1930s, shortly after the first commercially available camera was introduced, Stalin had his enemies “air-brushed” out of photographs. With the advent of high-resolution digital cameras, powerful personal computers and sophisticated photo-editing software, the manipulation of digital images is becoming more common. Here, I have collected some examples of digital tampering in the media, politics, and the law.

That’s Lincoln’s head on John Calhoun’s torso.

Gigapixel images of renaissance art that you can zoom in for detail. I’m guessing that haltadefinizione means high-def in Italian.

24 photographs from the LA Times that capture the horror and drama of the recent wildfires.

(Open it in a fresh window to avoid the automatic resizing of your browser.)

Watch one part of San Diego county catch fire. The South view is the most dramatic.

HT: Simon Bass

See his full gallery of images here.

Hat tip to Susan Gertson.

I took this photo a week ago today on the West Fork trail of Oak Creek Canyon.

For more from that trip, go here.

I took this picture through my windshield as I approached the Santa Susana pass into Simi Valley yesterday, around 4:30. The smoke was coming from wildfires 40-50 miles away.

A great web site for panoramic images.

The sissy side of the Taliban.

War photography tends to be a grim business, with the best pictures usually presenting the most tragic, horrific images. Therefore it was a pleasant surprise to discover Thomas Dworzak’s fantastic series of brightly colored, found photographs of Taliban fighters striking effeminate poses — some holding flowers and wearing enough black eyeliner to make a glam rocker proud.

The boys and men had Afghan passport photographers make the portraits clandestinely in the late Taliban era, flouting strictures against figurative representation, then abandoned them when they fled the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Dworzak found the photographs in a studio near his hotel in Kandahar.

Watch the slideshow here.

From Popular Science.

The last measurable rain in Southern California was April 20. Typically, our winter rain season starts in December or January. But, after a year with only 3.5 inches of rain, we got lucky yesterday with a 1/2 inch or so.

Anglenos were so excited — it’s like the first snow in other places. More is on the way.

I shot this orange grove this morning, around 7:30. The mountains in the background are the Topa Topas.

Moisture from Hurricane Dean found its way into SoCal, and for the past week we’ve had cumulous clouds in abundance — unusual for this time of year. Yesterday I goofed off and shot some photos near Ventura Harbor.

Here are three featuring the same cloud formation, which didn’t seem to change for hours.

I took this shot near Point Mugu Naval Station last night. This fellow had an intriguing exercise routine, kicking the soccer ball up the slope of the beach just far enough that it would still roll back.

He worked his way down the length of the beach and back. Later, as we found ourselves climbing on some rocks nearby, I noticed his eastern European accent. Thus, Boris.

Photographer Erik Almas is featured, among others, in the latest edition of The F-Stop, a webzine.

Photographer Matt Hoyle has an arresting visual style that defines all of his work. In this gallery, he shows us portraits of people who claim they’ve seen ghosts.

The stories are amusing and the photos are stunning.

Have a look. 

Tip: the slideshow controls are not visible at first. Mouse over the area underneath each paragraph.

I shot these strawberry fields in Ventura, California yesterday around 2:30.
Ventura County produced $366 million in strawberrys in 2006.

Click to see the full gallery.

Photography with an attitude. Great stuff even if you abhor the sermon.

Check out the portfolio of photographer Phillip Toledano. Great stuff, annoying website.