One thing for sure, there is a bottomless well of very interesting people in Arcata, California. I decided to start documenting many of the more colorful people I come across. With the waining days of warm sunshine, and my busy fieldwork schedule, I can only spend a couple of hours each weekend roaming around downtown Arcata, looking for people to photograph. Here’s my first attempt.

This past weekend, my friend Chelsea and I met up for a short camping trip along the California North Coast, starting in Fort Bragg and ending in San Francisco. Stopping by a boutique store in Fort Bragg, Chelsea found a golden “space” suite, and after some persuasion, it was hers. An outfit like that (a “daily wear”, she called it) begged for a beach photo shoot.

It’s always a treat and a challenge to work with Chelsea. In her previous life in Anchorage, Alaska, she did a brief stint as a professionally-trained model. However, once in the wilds of nature, her inner energy keeps her hopping, like a chickadee, making it almost impossible to have her pose. After a couple of years of photographing her, I came to the conclusion that the only way to get interesting images with my friend is to just let her do her thing and be ready with my camera.

We found an interesting rocky outcropping on one of the beaches between Fort Bragg and Fort Ross. The tricky part was lightning and reflectiveness of the outfit. It was around 2 pm, not the best time for such a session, so I decided to go with the more “Mars” feeling of the images with a powerful flash and exposure compensation. The images are minimally post-processed.

I took these photos of my grandma (“babushka” in Russian, emphasis on the first syllable) 3 years ago. She is turning 93 this November. In bright mind, she still lectures me every time we talk on the phone on my life’s choices, and like with any Jewish grandma, it usually boils down to what I should eat, emphasizing that my mostly vegetarian diet and lack of soup consumption is slowly killing me.

She was born on November 7, 1917. A year before World War I ended. Those of you familiar with the Soviet history will recognize that it was also the date of the October Soviet Revolution, which brought about the civil war and, five years later, formation of the Soviet Union. The official Soviet version of events says an assault led by Vladmir Lenin was launched at 9:45 p.m. signaled by a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora in St. Petersburg. We like to joke in the family that it was the sound of the shot that made my grandma’s mom give birth on that date. Ironically, when we all emigrated from the Soviet Union at the very beginning of 1992, my grandma in tow (or, was it me in tow?), the Soviet Union fell apart. Is it just possible that my grandma was that invisible glue that kept the whole country together for 80 years?

A small but dedicated group has sprung up in Humboldt. They show up on beaches, early in the morning, rakers in hand, ready to leave their mark. They take nothing but pictures. They avoid leaving footprints. What they do leave in the wet sand are geometric figures, some quite large. They make labyrinths for themselves and others to enjoy. Inevitably, the tide comes in, burying their creations.

To join or observe, or see many other photos, check them out on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=106161612764020

Driftwood, scarred from fire. Beached. A wandering soul, tucked in the sand. Nearby. Fiery hair gently clinging to the grain of the wood.

Luckily, several people outside the cafe directed us around the corner and we soon found two women standing outside, apparently in charge of the commotion. They directed us to a spot on the sidewalk and told us to wait. The bus arrived within 10 minutes and left at 10:30, half an hour ahead of schedule. Usually these buses are full of college students, as they are cheap, fast, reliable and a great way to travel between Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington and NYC. This time, the crowd was different, going to D.C. with one purpose – to witness the inauguration.

We rolled into the D.C. Chinatown at 3 am on January 20th. People were wandering the brightly lit streets, police cars cruising everywhere, their lights throwing patriotic reds and blues on the surrounding buildings. Many cafes and diners were open, filled with people eating, drinking, talking and singing. It felt like an impromptu national holiday, a surreal late-night party in the wee morning hours, when alcohol is gone and everyone is half-asleep.

We decided to take the Metro to the Mall, a large rectangular open area between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, where most of the people were gathering for the ceremonies. As the Metro didn’t start running for another hour and it was a bit chilly outside, we dove into one of the basement eateries to keep warm. Tea, soup and chicken wings turned out to be the perfect snack for the occasion.

The Metro brought us within half a mile from the Mall. Streams of people were flowing in one direction, combining with streams from side streets into larger flows. Sirens and police lights everywhere blinded and stunned chilled and sleepy walkers. We silently entered the flow and drifted with the crowd. By 6 am we were as close as we could get to the Capitol, yet it was still 5 hours until the inauguration. Not wanting to freeze completely, we walked to the earliest-opening museum, one of the many lining the Mall, and half an hour after it opened were happily napping inside. It would’ve made for a perfect rest stop, if not for the crowd insisting on seeing the exhibits and periodically waking us up with their excitement.

By about 10:30 am, about half an hour before the official part of the ceremony was to begin, we were rested enough to venture outside. By then most of the Mall was full and we couldn’t get nearly as close to the Capitol as we did at 6 in the morning. We found a place on the outskirts of the crowd, by one of the huge-screen TVs. As we came to D.C. to see the people, rather than the official ceremony, I wasn’t paying as much attention to what was going on on the screen as the reaction of the people – booing whenever W. or Cheney would appear on the screen, clapping whenever one of the Clintons would be seen, and the cheer, joy and dancing when the Obamas themselves appeared.

By 1 pm, the official ceremony on the steps of the Capitol was over and the crowd started dissipating. As far as we could tell, the whole perimeter of the Mall was barricaded and closed off and no one seemed to knew exactly how to get out. We would follow the crowd in one direction, to find no escape at the end and turn back, only to come to another fence. What would have been a half-hour walk from the Mall to the Chinatown turned into a 5-hour journey. But it was worth it. To be in a crowd of this magnitude and leanings, it was an inspiring experience.

Here are Suzy’s photos from the trip (link) and a few more of my photos (link).

It’s less than a month until first multi-level cruise ships cast their shadow over downtown Juneau, overpowering with their massiveness most of the waterfront. Their guts will start spewing thousands of tourists onto South Franklin Street, letting them be on dry land just long enough to keep them motivated to spend money in Chinese-made trinket shops along South Franklin or on pre-packaged excursions of a few hours in duration – just long enough to justify the horrendous prices but not long enough to let them appreciate what Juneau is really about.

Just like many other Juneaunites, when I lived in the Valley or out the road, I used to go to downtown once a week or less in the summers. It gets noisy and crowded, tourists walking on roads, as if in Disneyland, cruise ships spewing smoke into the air, which gets trapped between the Juneau and Douglas mountains over the channel. Luckily, I now live just far enough from the waterfront in downtown to be shielded by a 15-minute walk from the passenger docks – just far enough for most tourists not to reach my little neighborhood, tucked away along the channelized Gold Creek.

Let me ramble for another second on the way I differentiate between tourists and travellers.  I greatly enjoy meeting and interacting with travellers – people who plan trips on their own and come on public or mass transportation – be it trains, busses, or, in our case, planes or ferries. They usually don’t rush in, trying to cover a lot of ground over a span of a few days or a week. They take time to learn about places and people. They often come with backpacks and travel guides. They are also often seasoned travellers, who have swallowed the travel bug that now drives them to see and learn still more. Now, tourists, by my definition, are the people who come on pre-packaged tours, often for a week or 10 days. Like animals herds of the Serengeti Plain, they travel in large groups, but instead of migrating by instinct, they are led by travel guides or little brochures to points they must see and trinket shops (often owned by the same cruise ship companies) they must buy from. They, for the most part, end up with shallow, truncated views of places they visit – if being allowed to stay in one place for 6 or 8 hours can really be considered “seeing” it.

When I was in high school, my parents took me on a couple of such “guided” mass trips, and since then I began to despise such travelling. I hope I will feel this way in another twenty years.

However, since moving to downtown and starting to observe tourists incidentally, I became amazed by the plethora of photographic material offered by them. They are brought by floating giants from all over the world and are concentrated on a several-block strip of South Franklin Street. Going there is like going to an human zoo – the tourists offer a gamut of clothing styles, colors, patterns and behaviors. And the gift shops conveniently provide plenty of props to work with – a moving and talking electronic life-size miner with a yellow hard hat sitting on a wooden box, a life-sized plush black bear, an oversized black and white eagle, and a wooden chair in the shape of a bear. And when I walk along South Franklin with a camera with a long telephoto lens, I blend right in – no one even suspects I am there to shoot tourists, not whatever they’re shooting, which I haven’t quite figured out yet. I started working on this captivating project last year and will continue exploring the subject in the coming months.

For more photos of tourists of South Franklin Street, click here. More photos will be added throughout this tourist season!

The room walls were painted in light blue, which was also the color of the window drapes. This gave me a nice background to work with. I put together a couple of light stands with tungsten bulbs to contrast nicely with the cooler background, and set everything up by a window. The sunshine streaming through the blue curtain of the window provided a well-illuminated background, which thus didn’t require a separate illumination.