Interview on WHAM

Last Friday, Bob Lonsberry was kind enough to give me about 10 minutes of time on his radio show to tell about my I Love Rochester New York book.  He had some nice words to say about the book.

Below is a photo of the University of Rochester that appears in the book.

Rochester Book now available on Amazon.com

I Love Rochester New York is now available on Amazon.com.  The book can also be obtained from local stores where books are sold, museum gift shops, or directly from me by e-mailing rulon.simmons@gmail.com. 

Below is a photo from the book depicting the 1991 ice storm.

USA Trip

A week ago Rebecca and I returned from a 5 ½ week, 10,000-mile tour of the United States.  We traveled through 25 different states, visiting family and of course taking pictures.  I targeted specific locations where I wanted to get photographs for a new book on the United States.  With this trip, I have been to every state in the Union at least twice—most of them many, many times.  I succeeded in getting the desired pictures.  One of our favorites is from the Seed Saver Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, the Golden Polish Chicken (shown below). 

New E-mail Address

My new e-mail address is rulon.simmons@gmail.com. 

Here is another picture from my book I Love Rochester New York.

Book Earns Over $600 for Charity

As an ITT Geospatial Systems’ fundraiser for the company’s ITT Watermark charity, sales of my book, I Love Rochester New York, earned over $600 ($5 for each book sold).  The amount is actually being doubled to $1200+ through a matching gift.  The charity helps provide clean water to poor areas of the world.  Overall sales of the book so far are in the neighborhood of 1000 copies.  The picture above is one from the book.

Book Printed

My book, I Love Rochester, NY, was printed on Tuesday at Mercury Print Productions, Inc. in Rochester, NY.  Two four-color Heidelberg off-set printing presses were used to produce the book.  It will take about another week for binding before the books are delivered.  I was impressed with the quality control process, where color, registration, density, etc. were continually monitored (on about one of every 100 sheets) as the presses were running.   One photo below shows a sheet being pulled for evaluation.  I am evaluating the cover pages in the other photo.   

Air Show

Last Saturday, I photographed a friend’s family reunion.  This person happens to live right at the end of a Rochester International Airport runway.  The reunion was scheduled to overlap with the ESL Air Show.  So I got to photograph the family, participate in a picnic, and enjoy the air show.  One of my favorite pictures shows two of the Navy’s Blue Angel jets, flying in mirror image (one right-side-up and the other up-side-down).  Photographic settings for these pictures were approximately ISO 800, f/8, and 1/4000 sec.

Hill Cumorah Pageant

Since 1998, I have served as the Hill Cumorah Pageant photographer.  I helped as an assistant with the photography for many years before that.  Over the years, the photography has included taking pictures of cast teams, picturing families in costume (discontinued last year), and taking publicity photographs.  It has been wonderful to feel the excitement of pageant each year as a cast of around 800 comes together and in a very short time is ready to present the show.  Lorna Bingham helped me take the cast team photos this year.  Together we photographed 36 cast teams and the work crew last Saturday afternoon.  Afterward, I stayed for the performance and captured some additional pictures during the show.  Below are pictures of Nephi’s boat in a storm, the Destruction Scene, and the work crew.

Portraits

Earlier this year I was selected as the portrait photographer for Rochester’s Policeman’s Ball.  I took the opportunity to purchase a hand painted “Old Masters” backdrop, suitable for full length and close-up portraits.  This lovely background (shown in the photo below), along with a variety of other colored paper backgrounds and studio lighting that I already owned, gives me full capability to take professional portraits at my home or other locations.  Given that I now how more time to pursue this activity, I announce my availability to do individual or family portraits. 

I Love Rochester New York Book

It’s been nine years since I published my first book, i.e., National Geographic Photographic Field Guide: Birds (updated and reprinted as National Geographic Photographing Birds).  I’ve had several ideas for books since.  But I had not initially intended to create a book about Rochester, that is until my son Ken showed me his collection of illustrated books of every place he had lived—except Rochester.  Determined to help him fill this significant gap, my wife and I visited several Rochester bookstores. Failing to find a book that we particularly liked, my wife said to me:  "why don't you publish one of your own?"  She thought I would make a half-dozen copies and be done with it.  But if I were to go to that much effort, I figured I might as well make the book available to others.  And so, over a period of a couple of years, came into being my book on Rochester.  With text and photographs, this book shows how Rochester has developed from a little village called Rochesterville into New York's third largest city.  The 143-page book is lavishly illustrated with photographs I have taken over 38+ years.

With prepublication sales on the order of 500 copies, today I delivered my book to Mercury Print Productions, Inc. (Rochester, NY) to have 3000 copies printed.  The books will soon go on sale in places such as Wegmans, Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc.  Blog readers are invited to contact me (rulon.simmons@gmail.com) directly for discounted copies at $20 for one copy and $15 for additional copies.  The books will be available in about 2 1/2 weeks.

Discovering the Bisti Wilderness - New Mexico's Hidden Treasure

Mars could not look stranger than this place.  Indeed, Bisti (pronounced Bis-tie) Wilderness is a land of strange rock formations and fascinating contrasts.  Some rocks are fire engine red while others are stark gray.   The rocks have weathered into shapes that can easily be described as mushrooms, turtles, arches, and even a perfectly formed hound dog.  Others are so bizarre as to defy description.  But while some people can’t get enough of the place, others can’t wait to leave.  On one visit to Bisti, my wife and I came across another couple, two of the sparse visitors to this wilderness.  The man grumbled that he couldn’t see why his wife had insisted on dragging him there.  While I’ve now been there several times, I can’t wait to return again.  My wife is more sympathetic with the husband we met, however, not anxious to go back.  Yet when she sees my pictures of the place she marvels and says: “I stood right there with you and never saw that!” 

Published pictures first interested me in this out-of-the-way place, some 30 miles south of Farmington, NM.  I have searched for four specific sites whose images are etched in my mind, and so far I’ve only found one.   Yet, in the process, I’ve found dozens of equally interesting features to happily satisfy my photographic passion. 

Technically, the wilderness is now the Bisti – De-Na-Zin Wilderness, the two separate nearby areas of Bisti and De-Na-Zin having been recently merged.  Of this area, a fellow from the Bureau of Land Management in Farmington once told me, “we have people who come from Europe to see Bisti, yet many folks that live here in town don’t even know it exists.”  That may be changing now that roadside signs have been put up pointing the way off from Route 371. 

Anyone that will be in the Rochester, NY area between now and July 1 is invited to view my photo exhibit at St. John Fisher College.