On Saturday, November 3rd, 2018, Laguna Art Museum hosted an event on the Main Beach of Laguna Beach, CA. Entitled the “Shoreline Project” was a community project based upon Elizabeth Turk’s art work. Hundreds of volunteers held led-lit umbrellas that featured Seashell Mandalas by Elizabeth Turk and moved around with them.

My friend and I arrived more than an hour prior to the start of the event and set up our cameras in a good vantage point. We were able to see the whole beach from the cliff; unfortunately the volunteer dancers did not move much away from their original location. I only took my Lensbaby lenses with me, and just one 85mm prime lens.

While we were waiting for the event, I captured the late afternoon beach with various LB lenses. On some of the following images you can see the group of volunteers dressed in black on the left side of the pictures.

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Double Glass
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The End of an Era
In April, May and June of 2013, as well as in June of 2014 I attended a few photographic workshops lead by members of The Legacy Project. During these days the participants were taken back to shut down runways and hangars of the former El Toro Airbase, which were closed to the public.
Why did I attend these workshops? It wasn’t a military background. I very much enjoy taking pictures of architecture, and the older the building it is, the more interesting it becomes to me. Portraying former beauty or function in decaying buildings and places is another favorite photographic topic for me. When I heard about the first workshop and how close to our home it was going to be, I signed up right away. I am very glad I did. This was a very interesting and eerie location to visit and to photograph.
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Although I am not too much into astro photography, I certainly wanted to watch the Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017, and to take some photos. It wasn’t a total eclipse in our area; we live in Southern California. The last Solar Eclipse I watched was a total one, and I was lucky enough to experience it in my birth country, Hungary, in 1999.
I spent a relatively short time preparing for today’s event. I purchased a solar filter sheet and made a homemade filter for my lens yesterday morning. Then I practiced for about an hour to take pictures of the Sun with the filter on. I had to find the right focusing spot, as well as settings that I could start out with today.
My equipment: Nikon d750 dslr, Nikon 28-300mm lens (set at 100mm), CamRanger (to connect my iPhone with the camera), and the filter. (The CamRanger was not necessary, but made the process easier.) I took all the images at 100mm, because I wanted to be able to record the whole eclipse and not move the camera too many times.
Solar Eclipse Photography​
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Since I’ve learned about the Orange County Canon Experience Center’s educational programs about 2 month ago, I’ve taken a few night classes there. I take every opportunity to educate myself, especially about photography.
I signed up for the Harry Benson: Shoot First event at least a couple of weeks ago, and I have to tell you honestly that I didn’t read the description well enough. I thought that I was just going to see a documentary about Harry; you can imagine my surprise, when I actually saw him in person coming into the theatre, and after the movie having him answer questions from the audience.

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Harry is 86 now, and he is still as funny as he was throughout his life. It was awesome to get the background stories behind many of his images, and also hear his insights about photography. This was one of the most inspiring events I’ve attended in the past decade.
A few of Harry Benson’s famous images in the gallery:
Harry gave us permission to take pictures and videos of him (at least I had my iPhone with me), and here is his answer to one of the questions: “What was his most powerful, moving picture he had taken.”
​The documentary of his life is very interesting, entertaining, and touching. If you get a chance, make sure you watch it. It is available after December 9, 2016: HARRY BENSON: SHOOT FIRST 
In the spring of 2013 I heard about a photography workshop series lead by the The Legacy Project team at the OC Great Parks. I was able to attend two of the 5 classes, and a couple of my images were included in the gallery exhibit entitled A Different Point of View. (Post about last year’s event.)

Raider Country Hangar at the former El Toro Air Base
​A few weeks ago I found out that another three part series was offered at the Great Park. Although I couldn’t attend the first part, I very excitedly signed up for the other two classes. The first one was lead by Jacques Garnier, who explored the peaks and valleys of the creative spirit. The workshop was more of a conversation than a lecture, and participants explored different ideas of how to overcome the ‘blank page’ syndrome, or the ‘photographers’ block’. Ironically, one of Jacques’ great ideas was to switch lenses for some new point of view. Just days prior to the workshop I purchased a fish-eye lens, and I was looking forward to trying it out at the airbase location we were going to see. This day we visited the Raider Country former hangar, which is partially occupied by a recycling company. We were able to explore the left side of this building, at least a few rooms in it.The place is a photographer’s paradise – it hasn’t been cleaned for many years, possibly over a decade. For a person like me, who likes to record messages from the past, this was a place hard to leave. I mostly used my new fish-eye lens, and I feel, that I captured some important elements of the deteriorating building and its history. I’ve created a thematic entitled A Decade of Decay, which portrays rooms from the above mentioned building, and a few images from another abandoned building.

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The second workshop was lead by Mark Chamberlain, and he educated us in great detail about the history of the park, the Legacy Project, and the future green corridor that is supposed provide a safe route for wild animals between the Santa Ana Mountains and the Pacific Ocean (Crystal Cove State Park). As part of the workshop we rode the Great Orange Balloon (my first time!), and we visited a fenced, closed from the public area that will become the green corridor. A few images from the balloon:

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