January, 1984 photo of dead fish in Potrero Creek below Lake Sherwood Dam.

Events twenty-six years ago led to this week's golf tournament. Lake Sherwood was the center of a major anti-development battle between Dayton Realty Co., on one side and long-time lake residents and Ventura County on the other.

The dam was originally built in 1904. For years a small group of residents lived along the edge of the lake. In the 1970s, the owners of Lake Sherwood, Dayton Realty proposed a nearly 1400 housing unit development. After years of fighting, Ventura County in 1980 rejected the development.

Around 1983 statewide concerns over the safety of old dams led to a Dayton Realty proposal to drain the lake to inspect the dam. After court hearings, the lake was allowed to be drained in December, 1983. Dead fish filled Potrero Creek below the dam. In January, 1984, two 15-year-olds and a 9-year-old had to be rescued from the mud by the Ventura County Fire Department.

The dam passed inspection, but the lake was not refilled. Weeds and decaying muck filled the lakebed.

The impasse was only broken when Hidden Valley neighbor David Murdock - reportedly irritated by the dry lake bed - bought Lake Sherwood from Dayton. The lake bed was cleaned up and refilled. Very up-scale homes and a top-notch golf course were built.

But today there is no wall-to-wall condo buildings around the lake.

I posted 20 Lake Sherwood photos to this Flickr set. I shot these photos in 1984 while working at The News Chronicle.


Lake Sherwood in 1984 after water lowered 25 feet to allow inspection of dam, below.



Lake Sherwood today.

In Thousand Oaks, the fall foliage usually reaches its peak right around Thanksgiving. Here is my favorite from a shoot on Monday.


Be grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday night, Bob Lachman and I walked over to Pershing Square to shoot the ice-skating rink. I was getting nice boring photos when I noticed Bob just twirling his iPhone camera at the holiday lights. Why not. I started doing the latest dance - the camera twirl, above.

Of course I had to run the image through Topaz Simplify, below, to create something that would have been perfect for those 1960s light shows I used to help put on.

While walking around the new LAPD building tonight I noticed one of the names on the LAPD Memorial had a photo and ribbons.

Civil War Reenactment Image before Topaz Detail.


Same Image after applying Topaz Detail.

A couple nights ago I finished post-processing the images from the Moorpark Civil War Reenactment. Out of some 600 frames, digital and on film, I have ended up with 40. They are posted at this filckr set.

As mentioned in a previous post, this was the basic workflow:

1 - In Lightroom apply antique photo preset.

2 - In Lightroom Apply Matt Kloskowski's medium edge darkening preset.

3 - Still in Lightroom adjust image contrast and brightness.

4 - Open copy of image in Photoshop.

5 - Pice one of about 30 masks from Extreme Edges disk.

6 - Size mask to size of image, select all, copy, add alpha channel to image, paste into alpha channel, load selection inverted and delete edges. I often used free-transform to size the mask.

7 - Save back to Lightroom.

8 - Open another copy of image into Photoshop and apply Topaz Detail. ( Or Topaz Simplify)

9 - Save back into Lightroom, caption and upload to flickr.

After trying various Topaz Simplify and Detail presets I settled on the Creative Detail and Interior Strong Detail as the one to use. The gritty effect from these presets best matched the edge masks used.

I tried a second very different effect with single frames from the Oktomat camera. The camera puts eight very low quality images on each 35 mm frame. I picked a couple of single frames, enlarged and processed through Topaz Simplify. Below is one of the images that resembles 1800's paintings.

Previously I have blogged about my love to just jump into the car and drive. No GPS for me. It's get lost time. Sunday after the soccer tournament in Bakersfield I jumped on Highway 58 and headed east to Mojave. Somewhere west of Tehachapi I spotted this cool Keene Cafe sign at a freeway exit and stopped to take some pics. Of course I then headed east on some back-road and after 30 minutes realized I was lost. Time to turn around and go back to Keene Cafe.

Once back on Highway 58, it was a stop in downtown Tehachapi. Among a bunch of cool Halloween inspired decorations was this witch, below.

Next stop was Mojave. I stopped at the entrance to Mojave Air & Space Port and shot a couple aircraft with the fading dusk including a Phantom jet fighter.

While in Mojave, I stopped for a sandwich at the local Cafe 58. While eating I found a copy of Aerotech News and Review newspaper to read. Buried inside was an article about volunteers cleaning up at Joe Davies Heritage Airpark at Plant 42 in Lancaster. A locally built half-scale Vietnam Wall memorial was also on display from November 13th till the 21st. It is open 24 hours a day. That meant extra lighting installed on the aircraft and the memorial wall.

Off to Plant 42.



Local veterans in the Antelope Valley in recent years built their own half-scale version of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. This Viet Wall is named The Mobile Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the Antelope Valley. About $100,000 was raised to pay a local company to build the wall. Link to LATimes blog post.

A perfect way to remember the 70 soldiers with ties to the Antelope Valley who were killed in Vietnam.

Several more pics are on my Flickr page.

The Newbury Park Boys AYSO U19 B team took second place Sunday at the Area 10 playoffs in Bakersfield. On Saturday they won all three matches 1-0,1-0 and 4-0. On Sunday they beat Agoura 2-0 in overtime. In the championship game they lost 2-1 to Woodland Hills.

Dotphoto Album

I picked up my new Jack antenna ball, but unfortunately for Jack, he looks like a tennis ball. Woody, background right in photo, is waiting for me to throw Jack so he can fetch. On this day Jack did not go flying, but a chewed up tennis ball did.

The new Jack-In-The-Box tennis, oops, I mean antenna ball, is part of a fund raising effort by Jack-In-The-Box to raise money for Big Brothers Big Sisters. Seventy cents of each one dollar plus tax limited edition ball sold goes to the youth mentoring organization. Last year's antenna ball campaign raised about $360,000.

From the press release: "The limited-edition antenna ball features a classic Jack-style noggin sporting a backwards baseball cap and red wrap shades, and blowing a gum bubble. The antenna ball is available for just $1, plus tax, at all participating Jack in the Box restaurants, while supplies last....."

Cool Jack!

Vietnam veteran David Stull stands guard while supporting a flagpole carrying the American flag at the Garden of Valor at Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village. This was one of three 30 minute shifts he stood guard. November ,1984 photo by Scott Harrison/The News Chronicle

Back in the 1980s Conejo Valley residents would observe a 24-hour vigil during the Veterans Day holiday. I took photos several times, but this 1984 photo at dusk remains my favorite. The current full name of Valley Oaks is Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park. The flame is still burning at the Garden of Valor.

Remember our Veterans on Wednesday.

To prepare a different look to this year's Moorpark Civil War Reenactment, I checked out many of the images at Civil War Photos.net. Some of the images had interesting aging effects from loss of emulsion or torn edges. I even considered making masks from some of these interesting borders. But I remembered a collection of masks I had purchased at Photoshop World in 2002. I found the disk of Extreme Edges Volume 2 done for Photoshop 3. Perfect.

Sunday was spent at the Civil War Reenactment. Sunday night was spent paying with the masks. My basic workflow is:

1 - In Lightroom apply antique photo preset.

2 - In Lightroom Apply Matt Kloskowski's medium edge darkening preset.

3 - Still in Lightroom adjust image contast and brightness.

4 - Open copy of image in Photoshop.

5 - Pice one of about 30 masks from Extreme Edges disk.

6 - Size mask to size of image, select all, copy, add alpha channel to image, paste into alpha channel, load selection inverted and delete edges.

7 - Save back to Lightroom.

8 - Open another copy of image into Photoshop and apply Topaz Detail. ( Or Topaz Simplify)

9 - Save back into Lightroom, caption and upload to Flickr Civil War 2009 set.



Shoot it's getting late. So far I have finished and uploaded about ten images. Looks like another fun project that will take a few extra days. I will continue posting to my filckr site. Enjoy the photos. Scott

Man, I can't believe its been a year since I shot the Civil War Reenactment in Moorpark. Here are a couple photos from last November's event. The next shoot-out is this weekend!


From the conejovalleyguide.com: The Rotary Club of Moorpark presents what is billed as the largest Civil War Reenactment in Southern California at Tierra Rejada Ranch (enter at Underwood Farms), 3370 Sunset Valley Road, Moorpark. Events start at 10 a.m. Dates are set for Saturday and Sunday, November 7th and 8th. For more information go to Conejo Valley Guide.

Last year I was only able to attend one of four re-enactment battles. But I was able to get these images: flickr Civil War 2008 set. I uploaded 48 images this morning to that flickr set.

Last year I put many of the same images in this flash gallery.

For anyone who loves history, this is a must see event. Last year the Civil War Reenactment had 800 soldiers.

Can anyone guess where I will be this weekend?

With the shorter days recently, my evening walks in downtown Los Angeles are after dusk. I found the kit zoom lens just too slow to shoot anything. Last week I replaced the kit lens with a 50 mm f/1.8 and quickly started getting some fun images. Here are a few from last Thursday. The neon lights are at the corner of 5th and Main. The middle photo includes Bob Lachman from www.photographyandthemac.com. The bottom photo is of 5th Street.