Stuck in Fresno

[John Kasaian]

Not Lodi, like the song, but Fresno! This is due to a series of unfortunate events (a series of family illnesses being the #1) so that the only out of town travel I've been able to do was an overnight for my 105 year old Uncle's funeral in LA.
We've been talking about a one day trip to Avila Beach for Mother's Day but it doesn't look like that's going to happen either.
Since we're down to one car even a day trip to Yosemite to pick up my National Parks Geezer Pass isn't even on the horizon as I now serve as the family chauffeur and therefor have my standing orders.
This has been going on since mid-winter, but this isn't the rant it sounds like.
I'm sure many here have transited through Fresno on the way to one of three National Parks close by (but not close enough) and probably never wondered what there might be to photograph in Fresno.
Well, I've been studying the situation out of necessity.
Sadly most of the interesting historic architecture in the downtown was destroyed in the 1960's.
The older Catholic churches were wreck-o-vated about the same time although St John's Cathedral survived pretty much intact until it's horrible "restoration" in the 1980s. For color work the French stained glass windows at the Shrine of St Therese (colored glass 1" thick) is a treat as is all the carved marble. St. Ann's at the Chancery has been well preserved though. There are still a some photogenic Orthodox churches (especially the one in the farming community of Yettem as well as the Greek Orthodox church near Radio Park) These are kept locked and a photographer will have to contact the office for access.
For public buildings there is the Art Deco Hall of Records in Courthouse Park and the old Santa Fe Amtrak station nearby. The much prettier Southern Pacific Depot has been converted into a school of some sorts and now looks nothing like a train station, complete with a cement wall separating it from the tracks.
There are a few old fashioned cemeteries with real vertical tombstones just off of Hwy 99 (take the Belmont exit and go West)
Other notable structures include Kearney Mansion, the Meux home, the old water tower, the Coke Hallowell River Ranch and the Warnor's (originally Pantages) theater.
For landscape photography you might enjoy the Shinzen Japanese Friendship garden at Woodward Park, right off Hwy 41 if you're Yosemite bound. You might also find some interesting shots along the river bottom, especially in the winter mornings when there is dense fog and no skeeters.

[dsphotog]

Look on the bright side.... You really could be stuck in Lodi.... or Modesto.

[John Kasaian]

FWIW the Shinzen Japanese Friendship Garden requires an advance purchase photo permit. There are some exceptions so contact the Gardens first
http://www.shinzenjapanesegarden.org/photography.html
Note the guy with the Speed Graphic on the web page!

[Drew Wiley]

Isn't the big tourist draw in Fresno the Muffler Shop Hall of Fame? Or maybe the Orchard Removal Festival with all the bulldozers and asphalt layers every Spring?

[Richard Wasserman]

Isn't the big tourist draw in Fresno the Muffler Shop Hall of Fame? Or maybe the Orchard Removal Festival with all the bulldozers and asphalt layers every Spring?

Now these sound worth photographing! How many pretty landscape pictures does the world really need?

[Drew Wiley]

Fresno County has spectacular scenery. Thousand of lakes, canyons twice as deep as Grand Canyon, giant sequoia groves, multiple designated wilderness areas,
close proximity to three national parks. The only problem is that to get to them from Fresno you have to go through a checkpoint at the edge of a town called
Clovis. There is an armed guard posted on Copper Avenue. Nobody from Fresno is allowed past there unless you pass a DNA screening to prove your diet consists
primarily of cottontail rabbit and cattle pond bass. John knows these things.

[dsphotog]

Wasn't it Ted Orland's "List of photographic truths" that said "It's impossible to make a good photograph in Fresno"?

[Richard Wasserman]

Wasn't it Ted Orland's "List of photographic truths" that said "It's impossible to make a good photograph in Fresno"?

I checked my poster and indeed Mr. Orland did say that. But, come on, it can't really be true can it? Is Fresno so much worse than anywhere else? (I've never been there) Besides I want to stick up for the ugly places in the world—I think they are eminently photogenic, just not in a pretty postcard manner. Significant photographs can be made anywhere.

PS. I know you guys have been joking, but maybe not completely...

[Drew Wiley]

The opportunities are actually pretty good right now. Millerton Lake, only fifteen minutes out of town, would be an excellent place to photograph mud cracks this
year. Then look at how famous some of the photographers of the 1930's Dust Bowl became. John is in exactly the right area to photograph the next dust bowl.
Or, perhaps wildlife is your genre. No need to drive to Yosemite and leave your picnic box out. The bears are heading down to Fresno to jump in the swimming pools. Once those dry up, who knows?

[smithdoor]

Nice list of places in Fresno City
I have been to all most place on your list
The fog is just about gone today do to no rain
I live in Clovis

Dave

[Kevin Crisp]

Have dinner at The Elbow Room. They claim the best $20 steak sandwich on earth, and based on my first time there Friday evening, it was the best steak sandwich I've had.

[John Kasaian]

The Elbow Room is very good! I know one of the owners. There are actually many good places to eat in Fresno and there's even one or two good places in Clovis!
I've often thought of photographing taco trucks, but I get too distracted---that darned Mexican food!

[John Kasaian]

To add insult to injury with my sequestering in Fresno----the recent snowfall in the Sierra has been washed away by the heavy warm rain this past week end----reports are that the falls in Yosemite Valley are really cooking right now! Sheesh!

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, some young climbers visiting the West for the first time stopped by yesterday and showed me their cell phone shots of the falls. I kinda like them running
thinner than usual; but that also means they'll go bone dry before midsummer. Hope your family illness or whatever this is, John, resolves itself soon. Can't you
at least sneak out to the borders of town for the last of the wildflowers or whatever before smog season? Or maybe that is already past, due to drought? I looked at Google Earth shots of my old place up the hill and could hardly believe how dry things look. Here the hills are just beginning to show dry patches; but it won't be long. We had a good soaker rain last week, but not enough to make the trails mucky. Once it gets hot, I start routinely heading over to Marin. Taco trucks? We've booked a "gourmet" one in advance for an event here at work. Those things get featured on TV shows just like fine walk-in restaurants. I've always thought if I got stuck down there in the flatlands, esp in smog season, that trucker subculture would make an interesting photo project, at least with the right kind of color film. But given the summer heat, I tend to move thru the Valley pretty fast. I just spent 2K on new brakes, shocks, tires, etc on the truck, and
simply can't afford to replace the anemic AC pump this year. Hoping I can sneak up some weekend to get an early high altitude dayhike at least; but I won't
get any serious vacation time till late summer. Hopefully the forest fires won't be everywhere at the same time.

[Willie]

Fresno, the Cleveland of the West.

[Drew Wiley]

If you really want a California resort paradise, book your midsummer vacation in either Barstow or Bakersfield.

[John Kasaian]

Well it looks like I may have to take Amtrak to Ventura to pick up our next car. IIRC I'll need to catch a through way bus at Bakersfield to make the connection. I'll try to remember to pack sun screen! Sadly it's not going to be a LF trip

[Kevin Crisp]

The City motto is "Well, we're not Trona."

[Drew Wiley]

When the original "Okie from Muskogee" reminisced about his childhood, and how they looked at Bakersfield as the promised land, I can hardly imagine how miserable the place they abandoned must have been like, Dust Bowl n' all. Everyone here is up in arms when one of refineries upriver has a significant EPA violation. Sunland Oil in Bakersfield had 27 of them one year. Some dude started his car down the road and ignited the atmosphere itself, and incinerated! Ironically, drive out of town a ways and you have the Carizzo Plain and wildlife refuge, one of the quietest most pristine places in the state (except for air quality). Just on the other side of Elkhorn ridge from that there are forests of oil wells, thousands of em. And Kern county contains some of the wildest as well as highest parts of the Sierra. But the town itself lives under yellow-green smog, kinda like pyro stain or the surface of the planet Venus (which is probably more habitable), not the brown/black smog of Fresno or LA. Welcome to our little equivalent to Texas.

[Jim Noel]

Wasn't it Ted Orland's "List of photographic truths" that said "It's impossible to make a good photograph in Fresno"?

This goes along with my statement, "I spent a week in Fresno one night".

[Leszek Vogt]

Yes, the best part of Fresno is on the other side of the tracks. Excuse the sarcasm oozing...

Les

[Drew Wiley]

On a less than humerous note, I do expect an epidemic in Valley Fever due to this drought and its dust getting blown widely. It takes awhile for those spores to
break out in the lungs, but when they do it can behave a lot like TB.

[gleaf]

Perhaps we need to mount Photographic Rescue Expeditions to our compatriots.

[John Kasaian]

A lot where 1.000s of wooden power poles are stored caught on fire----there's a huge smoke cloud covering both 99 and 41 right now.
Those power poles are treated with some pretty nasty stuff.
This can't be good.
http://abc7news.com/news/massive-fire-burning-at-pg-e-power-pole-yard-in-fresno/688511/

[Kevin Crisp]

I'll bet creosote soot is nasty.

[Drew Wiley]

Everybody once treated fence posts with creosote. I had an Appaloosa that would gnaw one side of the post while flirting with the neighbor's Arabian mare, which
would gnaw the same post from the other side. Eventually there were just wooden balls suspended by the barbed wire. Apparently they liked the taste of creosote.
Maybe be it was an aphrodisiac, which might have been important since my Appaloosa was a gelding.

[matthew blais]

There is always someplace worse John...
Vinny and wife were stuck in Pearsonville a few years back when their "new-to-them" Vinniebago took a dump.
On my way north to hook up with the gang, I hung out to help and chauffeured to Ridgecrest the next day for parts.
Camping at a Shell Station was not the pinnacle of our week to say the least.

But...I did meet the charismatic and eccentric owner of the "hubcap" collection (Hubcap Capital of the World). I wanted to take her portrait but she said she send me a snapshot...guess she didn't get it... Vinny got a cool shot of the old bus out front if I recollect.
Silver linings in grey clouds...

[John Kasaian]

Everybody once treated fence posts with creosote. I had an Appaloosa that would gnaw one side of the post while flirting with the neighbor's Arabian mare, which
would gnaw the same post from the other side. Eventually there were just wooden balls suspended by the barbed wire. Apparently they liked the taste of creosote.
Maybe be it was an aphrodisiac, which might have been important since my Appaloosa was a gelding.
Drew, that Appy of yours was eatin' 'em, not smoking 'em lol! I've used lots of creosote back when you could still buy the stuff.

[Drew Wiley]

It's illegal for anything now except railroad ties and public utility poles. But creosote is abundant naturally in a lot of wild plants, esp in the chaparral zone. A bit of
it gets into the streams or onto other foliage, and every now and then onto my taste buds too! It's pretty hard to keep me away from a berry patch or miner's lettuce out in the woods. Wild blackberries are the sun-loving ones, most likely to be adjacent to chaparral.

[CropDusterMan]

Amazing photographs are to be had in Fresno...I know a bunch of salty old cropdusters there with great airplanes
and cool old hangers. There is also a ton of unemployment there due to the drought and water cutbacks...some of
the towns have huge unemployment. Adversity in a population can lead to some great environmental portraits.

[John Kasaian]

Amazing photographs are to be had in Fresno...I know a bunch of salty old cropdusters there with great airplanes
and cool old hangers. There is also a ton of unemployment there due to the drought and water cutbacks...some of
the towns have huge unemployment. Adversity in a population can lead to some great environmental portraits.

True that!

[Merg Ross]

Hi John,

While you are stuck in Fresno, be sure to check out Terry Hayden's exhibit at the Spectrum Gallery this month. Wish I were closer, it should be a good show.

Often think of meeting you there for my exhibit in 2004. Wow, where does the time go!

You are due for a show, don't be bashful!


Best,

Merg

[John Kasaian]

Thanks Merg!:o