A spectacular conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter at the SB Mission at twilight Monday.
Five different views are at: www.kevsteele.com/moon

Or rather: the new media piece. Andrew Kornylak provided 10frame/sec still-motion from a Nikon, myself and three others provided still images. One is the lead image in the mailer below.

Map of the “Tea Fire” that started at 6PM - images below taken at 8:30 while 2-3 miles away; the fire is out of view but must be an incredible sight from downtown.

Since mid-August my home page image has been an image that was selected for the Aurora Photos Action:Reaction project. To celebrate 15 years as an agency, they decided to do something different:

“This year marks Aurora’s 15th Anniversary! To celebrate the milestone Aurora plans an
interrelated body of work, created in a finite amount of time to showcase the skills and
creativity of our contributors.

As one of Aurora’s top photographers, we are asking you to participate. If you agree you
will become a crucial part of a project that works like a chain: each link is paramount. No
one can drop the ball on this or the project will fail.

On June 1, 2008, one name from the pool of participating photographers will be drawn at
random.   This first photographer will get an email 4 days before project launch.This email will notify the photographer that he or she is the first on the list and must conceive, shoot and deliver three images to Aurora within 48 hours.
There will be no restrictions on what those photographs might be. The day the first
photographer delivers images, one image will be chosen and the next photographer will
be randomly selected and notified via email along with a copy of the chosen image. The
second photographer must then deliver a set of images that relates in some way to the
initial photograph. How one image relates to the other will be dependent on the
perspective of the photographer making the photos. They, too, have 48 hours to deliver
their 3 images. This process will continue with selected images being posted on the web
ever other day until all the photographers have done an image set.” -  Jose Azel

Editors pick one of the three images, post it and the cycle continues.  The editors varied each week and came from Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Life, Time Magazine and others.

A few weeks NPR featured the project in their visual arts section.  Check out the entire NPR piece at:   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96169893

I was tapped for the Action/reaction as I was in an airport preparing for 6 flights in 2 days to Montana.  The girl was a stranger on the plane (Denver to LA) who was game for the concept I sketched.

I did a handful of shots setting up which caught the attention of the flight attendants (airlines are wary of people taking lots of photos on planes). After filling them in they were pretty supportive although sharing stories of people who have had cameras confiscated..

Here you can see the shot paired with the image I had to work off: http://www.aurora15.com/view/34/pair

And here a view of all the thumbnails in sequence: http://www.aurora15.com/view/all/thumbnails

The project is winding down to the last few days - three photographers left!  Then I’ll update the home page again…

Aidan Steele, age 12.5, knows way more dance moves than I do.

click an image to see larger

Industrial Recycling in Santa Barbara

Wind Turbines for clean energy near Joshua Tree / Palm Springs