This book came about when I was selecting photos for my previously published Blurb photo book, "Growing up in California, 1947-1959." I discovered I had taken ten times more photos during the years 1968 to 1970 than in the previous 20 years, and decided I should publish the best.
I also realized that before 1968 I had received no formal training in photography. But, I was drawn to the photos of Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Steichen, Danny Lyon, Pirkle Jones, Dorothea Lange, and Alfred Stieglitz, and imitated their work. So, during those years, by observation and trial-and-error, I slowly improved photographing people and landscapes.
Around 1969 I saw advertisements for photo workshops offered by Ansel Adams, and Pirkle Jones who had photographed the Black Panthers, and thought that a workshop with either of them would improve my skills. Since they had been models for my photography I wanted them to critique my work.
From the beginning, a good part of my photos were of people, and Jones helped me to build on the skills I had developed. I also learned how to improve the development of my film, and began using 35mm Kodak Tri-X ISO 400 film developed with Edwal FG7 combined with sodium sulfite.
Jones’ workshops inspired me to photograph the 1969 anti-Vietnam War protest march in San Francisco, and I dedicated a book to it.
The photos in this book were taken between 1968 and 1970, and are grouped into four parts: 1) Cityscapes and urban details of San Francisco, 2) People- San Francisco, Sausalito and south to Silicon Valley, and all the way south to Cholula, Mexico; 3) The Far West Natural Abstracts, Landscapes, Flora and a cute Frog, and 4) The environment nearby, and Inside the Universidad de las Americas- Cholula, Mexico where I studied anthropology and archaeology in the early 1970s.