We are a husband and a wife who take pictures. When we are not shooting, one of us is a journalist, the other a piano teacher. This is the second incarnation of our photo blog, and we hope you enjoy the visual tour of our work. If you are interested in booking, please visit our formal web site.
Brooktown Photography loves good food, traveling, making new friends and going for long walks on the beach.
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On a recent Friday night, after traipsing around North County doing interviews and portraits for the newspaper, we headed to Rainbow Community Church for a fund-raiser. We set up our booth and did our thing; those crazy Rainbow folks did the rest!
First off, possibly our best photobooth shot EVER:
The fund-raiser was coordinated by our amazing friend (and mother of the smiling baby above) Anndrea Boren. She’s below, in the middle. It was happy fund-raiser. Really.
We spent last week in Northern California with my parents. It was hot in Angel’s Camp, where we stayed, but we also took a couple of day trips, one to Yosemite (which will follow in a later post) and one to Lake Tahoe, which is where this was taken:
A few of my favorite things about the Western Sierra foothills include: Huge horizons, dark green oak trees against yellow grass, and endless rolling foothills.
One of my first photos published in the North County Times was of Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was visiting Valley Oaks after the devastating October 2007 wildfires. It was a front-page shot, taken with my old Nikon D80, and since then I’ve proudly seen dozens of my pictures appear in those pages. These days, I’m turning in around one assignment a week with photos, and due to space limitations, not all of the pictures I submit are used. So I thought I’d do some housekeeping and post the unused extras here, since otherwise they would never be seen. Accompanying each shot, or set of shots, will be a link where you can read the story or see the rest of the photos that the Times decided to use. Thanks for reading/viewing! (P.S. I love comments, but rarely get them. Seriously, if you leave me a comment, you will be my favorite person in the world for at least five minutes.) :) :) Enjoy!
First up are these three from Hot Summer Nites, the series of downtown events held in Fallbrook on six different Friday nights throughout each summer. I went to the event on July 9, and drooled all over the classic cars.
(Please note, the paper incorrectly slugged the story as “CARLSBAD,” which I assume was due to the fact that the couple in the photo they chose were from Carlsbad. Don’t be deceived, the picture was taken right here, in Fallbrook!)
BONSALL: Last flight out of Bonsall International Airport
One day this spring, I was driving home from Oceanside with Dori, and noticed that there were several people out flying model airplanes at the old Bonsall airstrip that was scheduled to be closed the next morning for road construction. The airport was in the path of the new and improved Highway 76, and I ended up hanging out with Glen Looft as he took the last flight ever taken there. It was a really interesting story, and here are a few photos that the Times passed over.
MILITARY: New VA cemetery pleases vets
For this story, I drove down to Miramar to take some pictures of a deserted field that will, next year, be developed into the VA’s latest cemetery. San Marcos Pearl Harbor survivor Ted Roosvall was an early and persistent champion of the project.
FALLBROOK: Annual repainting of water tower signals new class of seniors
Another one of my recent favorites, I had been after this story for years. Anyone who’s been to Fallbrook knows about the water tower with the years painted on it. Last month, I went up and watched while the tower was repainted, and, of course, took some photos. Here’s one:
NORTH COUNTY: San Marcos, Fallbrook students celebrate the day
Lastly, I was there for all three high school graduations in Fallbrook in June. Here is one of the graduates singing the National Anthem:
Please let me know if this was an interesting post. If there is positive feedback, I will make a habit of doing this every couple of months.
Today marks the 65th anniversary of the second atomic bomb used against Japan at the end of World War II. Last week, Tom interviewed a Marine Corps veteran who recalled what the city of Nagasaki was like less than two weeks after the explosion, and wrote up the interview for the North County Times.
“I could stand on top of the mountain, and look down the long slope to the ocean, east,” he remembered. “Out in the ocean was this archipelago of little islands, guns on every one of them. Had we invaded, we would have had to go through those guns. I was out there at 5 in the morning, and I would watch the sun come up. It was a beautiful thing, it would reflect (through) the archipelago, it would hit the mountain itself and the sun would come up. I used to watch that every morning.”
When James Henkel tells the story of the four months he spent in one of the only two cities ever to suffer an atomic blast, he starts right where any good screenwriter would —- in the bow of a Higgins landing craft.
That’s where, on or around Aug. 20, 1945, Henkel rode across Nagasaki Bay toward the Japanese mainland and a city shattered by a strange new kind of weapon.
“As soon as we got to shore, they dropped the ramp, and I ran off with my rifle, ready to shoot,” Henkel, 86, recalled during an interview this week. “There was a Japanese cop, standing there, saluting me. Saluting me so hard I thought his arm was going to break. (He was) afraid I was going to shoot him. Had he resisted or tried to get the drop on me, I’d have shot him. But he didn’t have any weapon.”
Henkel said he ran past the petrified police officer and into the most interesting four months of his life.
Read the rest at www.nctimes.com.
And here is a portrait of Henkel that the Times decided not to use. As you can see, a true Marine.
Last weekend, the big day finally came for my Uncle Paul and his bride, Nadine. We had a blast shooting their wedding at The Grand Tradition in Fallbrook, where the weather was in the mid-80s — perfect for an afternoon of shooting. As usual, the photobooth was a blast, and we have to thank their guests for being such a fun group to shoot!
First up, my nephew, the ring-bearer.
He flexes:
And……… the flower girl. (Love this sequence, after we gave her a handful of petals.)
“Should I do it?”
“I’m gonna do it…”
There were a lot of my nephews running around.
Stay tuned for some amazing images from their day. We love you, Uncle Paul and Aunt Nadine!!!
