The Parking Lot

So, I really need to catch up in my post production for my images. There is so much I want to do but can't until my images are ready to go.  I guess every photographer has that situation.  Oh well, this is a shot from my phone in the Target parking lot in Apple Valley, CA - where I live.  No post production, just the shot from the phone because I thought the clouds were really dramatic looking.  Truth be told, I think it is fine as is.

Eastern Sky

I am really drawn to images of the eastern sky at dawn in particular.  This image is from where I use to live in Victorville looking east towards Apple Valley – where I live now.  I wonder, did I know something but was not aware of it?

Mount Baldy (or Mount San Antonio)

  I live in a scenic paradise – the Victor Valley.  I know, some people would say, “What? #Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley and so on, are a part of a scenic paradise?”  It’s all in how you form your own thoughts about yourself and your life.  You want crap and feel like crap – I guess you’re crap.  I see what I see and I see a scenic paradise.  This is Mt. Baldy as seen east of Deep Creek Road at the top of the hill on Bear Valley Road.  It is part of the San Gabriel Mountains in San Bernardino County.  It is above 10,000 feet.  It is magnificent.  And it is an image I like a lot.

…What will I do?

The ultimate goal is to be a working fine art photographer showing in all of those great places where they show work by great fine art photographers/visual artist like Cindy Sherman, Winni Wintermeyer, Lorna Simpson, Andreas Gursky, Carrie Mae Weems, Alex Prager, Dawoud Bey, Alec Soth, Haley Jane Samuelson, etc.  As I am working on getting from point “A” to point “B”, I’ll put in some work doing those other things I like doing so much – event and portrait/portfolio photography.  I think I’ll need a new web site as my art web site, Edward Lance Montgomery Photography, will not really be the right fit for an event and portrait photography business.  Well, there is much to do so I better get busy.  Just the same, I’m always open to that super awesome career falling into my lap (like working at the California Museumof Photography in Riverside or the Kopeikin Gallery in LA, for example).

Things That I Have Done

I will graduate tomorrow with a bachelor’s degree.  This is one of the things I did to earn it.  It was the first video I created in Final Cut Pro X.  It’s a bit rough but I liked it.

Victorville’s Blue Dawn

I think I have said this before but the Victor Valley is a scenic place.  When you look around the place, you see how it could have easily been a vacation spot if it was approached that way years ago.  This blue dawn is another example of how amazing the views can be.

In this photo, I’m looking east north east, if you will.  It is a quarter past 6:00 am and you can see Apple Valley in the distance.  I think the layers of mountains are what really make the image.  Enjoy.

Apple Valley Plaza Site Survey, Part 3

Wow, being sick really sucks.  And you fall behind on so many things like these blogs.  Ok, I’m back from the dead so let me continue where I left off.

For these last four photos, I threw in a black and white layer in between my crossed processed layers and some Gaussian blur (refer to part 1 and 2 for details).  I also used the shadow/highlight effect.  The only thing I didn’t do was throw in some HDR.  Of course, this was all done in Photoshop.  I really like how these came out – abstraction and all.  Have a look.

Oh, there is no black and white layer on this particular image.  Still looks cool though.

Apple Valley Plaza Site Survey, Part 2

After doing a shadow/highlights adjusted layer, I applied a ‘cross processed’ layer to all five of these photos because I love that look/effect.  I did this just last week with Photoshop though I took these photos last summer.  And the last three shots I again went for the abstracted appearance.  Have a look.

Apple Valley Plaza Site Survey, Part 1

Moving on to June 18, 2011, I was out and about again doing site surveys (no, I don’t have a regular ‘9 to 5’ job) and exploring my new habitat.  Again, I was motoring eastbound down Bear Valley Road.  I passed through Apple Valley heading to the outskirts of that town and stopped when I got to Central.  On my left was a big strip mall that never quite became what it was supposed to be – the Apple Valley Plaza.  Ultra Star Cinema was completed and operational but the rest of the site was never completed.  It looks as though on the day someone said there was no more money to complete the work, everyone just walked away.  I can only assume that happened after the market crash of 2008.  The Victor Valley seems to have suffered more severely than other parts of California but it seems to have gone somewhat unnoticed, unless you live here.  This is another location that I’ll return to and shoot again.  This time, I shot this with my PowerShot S5 IS.  The Photoshop work done was minimal but I did that just a few days ago.  Have a look.

In this shot, I’m trying to abstract my subject with this from the bottom up angle.  I’ll do a lot more of this here.

Burnt out in Apple Valley

On June 17, 2011, I was back at this burnt out place for another look.  I wanted to do a model shoot here.  A wanted a kind of contrast with beautiful (the model) and ugly.  But this place held more than that.  It represented yet again lost dreams and hopes of a family or of a person.  And it was also a testament to the people who inhabit the Victor Valley – people who maintain a ‘no matter what, we’re going to keep on moving forward’ attitude.  Well, that’s at least how I felt seeing this place.  I took some liberties with Photoshop on some of these too.  I just wanted to render a different feel.  I shot it all with my Canon PowerShot S5 IS.  For a “point and shoot”, that’s an awesome camera.  So, have a look.

Victor Valley, CA

So I am driving around trying to scout out the area for photo shoots because I am new here.  Here being Victorville, CA.  I had been in Fontana for almost a year and just relocated to Victorville here in the VictorValley.  I had been driving around a few places, doing my ‘drive by shooting’ with my camera, when it occurs to me that the area was poised to blow up before the great economic meltdown of 2008 – The Great Recession as it is known in the financial world.  I say that because you can see signs of development that simply stopped.  So many places were in that predicament all over the country.  But why were people coming to Victor Valley in the first place?  The place gets crazy hot in the summer (it sits in the Mojave Desert) and crazy cold, with snow, in the winter.  In the winter, people do get “snowed in” up here when the CHP closes the Cajon Pass on I-15 – that means you are cut off from getting down below into San Bernardino/Riverside Metro and on to LA.  Well, you could always reverse direction and head to Vegas I guess.  But aside from being a place to stop and eat on your way to and from Las Vegas, why would people want to live out here?  I only came because it was cheap relative to many other areas in So Cal.  Nevertheless, the place was growing before the Great Recession.  Median house prices were above $350K back then.  I believe there is something more going on here than meets the eye.  Clearly, I am going to have to learn more.  But look for yourself:

I was out next to Mojave Narrows Regional Park on June 2 looking for interesting places to do a photo shoot.  Look at those mountains in the background.  California is full of impressive geography if you just pause to look.  I shot these with my Canon PowerShot A540 – still working my old faithful.

With my PowerShot A540 in hand on June 4, I was driving around way out in the far parts of Apple Valley (yeah, the “far parts”) and saw this abandoned place. Definitely, the ‘Hills Have Eyes’kind of stuff going on here. Oh, they filmed part of that movie out here. Makes you say hmm…

Yesterday, June 9, while driving to school (Cal State San Bernardino in North San Bernardino) on I-15, I observed how the smog was held at bay by the mountains as I drove through the Cajon Pass.  I know, what’s worse – texting and driving or shooting and driving?  It’s not as hard as it looks when you have a CanonPowerShot S5 IS with its “High-resolution 2.5-inch vari-angle LCD for easy shooting at any angle”.  Was that a plug or what?  They should hire me.

This last shot I took with the PowerShot S5 too.  I was just cruising the streets in Victorville hunting for places to shoot.  I just like how I caught the sun in this shot.  I shot this today, June 10, 2011.