Dave Bullock / eecue : Programmer | Photographer | Admin | Human

This morning I took a 20 minute flight on Virgin America out to the Mojave Spaceport to witness (and photograph) the unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo. I had a great time and wrote an article about it for Wired Science that I posted on the tarmac waiting to fly back to LAX. I ran in to Xeni Jardin and met Brian Lam when I was there.

Screen-grab hosted by flickr. 

Recently I have been participating in the Skid Row Photography Club (SRPC). When I was part of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) I requested funding for club which Michael Blaze started. DLANC ended up putting in $2,000.

Per the funding proposal I submitted, half of that money was to go towards purchasing cameras. We ended up buying six Fujifilm Finepix Z20FD digital cameras and six 2GB cards.

The 10 megapixel cameras remain property of DLANC, but each were assigned to a member of the SRPC. So far the participants have been very happy with their cameras. I have been ecstatic with the resulting images.

After a few more months of shooting, I will be curating a gallery show with prints from each member. We have another $1,000 in the budget to matte and frame the work. Any income from the sale of the photos will be split between the SRPC and the photographer.

It is inspiring to see the participants enthusiastically embrace photography. Each member of the club has their own style and interests. I am very excited about the upcoming show and this great group of photographers.

The Skid Row Photography Club meets every Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. in the UUCEP lounge on the corner of 6th and Stanford in Downtown Los Angeles. Everyone is welcome, no camera required.

Note: The Skid Row Photography Club is seeking funding and donations for more camera and computer equipment. We are also looking for a gallery or other venue to display the work during an upcoming Downtown Art Walk. If you know anyone how would be interested in helping, please let me know.

Members of the Skid Row Photography Club pose for a group shot in the UCEPP lounge in Downtown Los Angeles. 

I've been spending my free time over the last few weeks working on my new photography website. My good friend Cedrick Osborn did the graphic design. I did the XHTML/CSS and backend programming.

The site is pretty basic feature-wise, but gets the job done. It has about 200 of what I consider my best photos, some of which have never been published.

Take a few minutes and check out my new site: davebullock.com. Let me know what you think in the comments on this post. If you dig my new site, don't forget to tell your friends and blog/twitter about it!

Screen-grab hosted by flickr. 

According to dopiaza's Most Interesting Flickr set manager, these are my top ten most interesting photos on flickr:

UCLA scientists are working hard to fight cancer and their latest creations could target tumors directly. I toured the labs making these new nanomachines called nanoimpellers and took photos for Wired. You can check out the photos along with a brief intro I wrote by clicking here or on the photo below:

Screen-grab hosted by flickr. 

On Sunday I shot some photos of the grand opening of Mister Cartoon's new shop in my building: The Last Laugh / Upper Playground. I just posted the photos over on blogdowntown:

Photo hosted by flickr. Click here to see Upper Playground / Last Laugh Opening gallery.

On Sunday I spent the day covering the historic landing of the Phoenix on Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. It was an exciting assignment for Wired that entailed four separate trips, one to Goldstone in the Mojave and three to JPL. Here is some of my coverage from the landing, click on the screen-grabs to read the articles:

Screen-grabs hosted by flickr. 

I'm covering the Phoenix landing on Sunday from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Today was my second trip to JPL in as many weeks. I had a chance to interview two of the Mission Managers and I recorded them with my totally awesome Sony PCM-D60 using an excellent Sennheiser MD46 microphone and listening to it all with my Sennheiser HD 25-1 II headphones.

The first interview is with Joe Guinn, Mission System Manager:

My second interview that I recorded today is with Barry Goldstein, Phoenix Project Manager:

Screen-grabs hosted by flickr.

A funny anecdote: After interviewing Goldstein in Mission Control I asked him to move into some better light for a photograph with a good background. When he was walking over there I signaled Reuters photographer, Mario Anzuoni, to follow me so he could get a good photo as well. After I shot my photos Anzuoni took his, which is now up on Reuters. Here are some other great photos of the San Diego fire by Anzuoni. 

Last week I took an early morning drive out to the Mojave Desert to visit NASA's Goldstone facility. Goldstone is one of three Earth locations of the Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN is used to listen to and control spacecraft and has been around since the 50's.

A few days later I headed to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to get some photos of Mission Control and interview a lead technician responsible for the landing [click to listen to the podcast].

I will be covering the landing live on Sunday for Wired.com. My Mars landing coverage can be found here on Wired Science. Click on the image below to see the gallery:

Screen-grab hosted by flickr. 

After months of not posting on blogdowntown, I finally put a post together from this month's Art Walk. It's a short photo essay from a few galleries and it's live now. Click here to see my Art Walk post on blogdowntown.

Click here to check out the rest of my photos from the May Downtown Art Walk. 

A gallery that I shot for Wired.com just went live this morning. The process for creating the metallic glass is pretty cool. The materials they are producing will end up finding tons of commercial uses in the near future.

Screengrab hosted by flickr. 

After I was walking back from the protest today, I saw this totally awesome pipe-smoking fellow walking his fat fluffy bunny:

Today's protest was smaller compared to last years May Day protest. I would say roughly 10,000 people gathered beside City Hall at the end of the day. There were three groups, and photographed each of them, the first while it was gathering at Olympic and Broadway, the second from their rally point in MacArthur park to the intersection of 5th and Broadway where I met up with the Legalize LA group, which seemed to be the largest of the three.

Here are some of the photos from today:

More after the jump.... 

I spent the weekend shooting Coachella for Wired.com. Here are the posts I haven't linked to yet. Click the screengrabs to see the photos:

Screengrabs hosted by flickr. 

Here's a link to some of the shots I took today on Wired.com's Listening Post:

Screengrab hosted by flickr.  

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm covering Coachella for Wired.com. I just posted a selection of the photos I shot yesterday over on Wired.com's Listening Post. I got a lift up in a cherry picker over the main stage and got some photos of the whole grounds at night:

Screengrab hosted by flickr. 

I'm liveblogging from Coachella for Wired.com. I just put up my first post featuring some photos I shot last night of the staging and art. I'll be posting a few times a day for the duration of the show. Check it out:

Screengrab hosted by flickr.  

As I mentioned in my Mojave Wildflower post yesterday, I traveled to the revived ghost town of Shoshone for the Desert Explorers Rendezvous. We went on a few off-road trips, exploring mines and ghost towns along the way. It was my second DE Rendezvous, here is my post from the 2007 Rendezvous. Here are a few photos from the trip:

Click here to see the rest of the Desert Explorers Rendezvous 2008 photos. 

A few weeks ago I took a trip out to the desert with my lovely wife and my father-in-law, Jim Proffitt. The group that brought us together for this excursion to Shoshone is known as the Desert Explorers. They are a group of mostly older folks who have an immense pool of knowledge and love for the desert.

I found and photographed 11 different species of wildflowers. Alan Romspert is a botany professor at UC Fullerton and helped me identify the species I shot during happy hour in Shoshone. Here are a few of the photos I shot:

Click here to check out the rest of my Mojave Wildflowers photos.  

I have my second gallery show coming up this Thursday at the Spring Arts Collective Gallery during the Art Walk in Downtown Los Angeles. If you're in the area please come by and take a look at the four framed pieces I will be showing. The show is a continuation of my "Land of Nuclear Enchantment" series that just wrapped up at Niche Video Art. Here are the specifics:

Thursday April 10th, noon to 9 p.m. (Reception: 7-9 p.m.)
Spring Arts Collective Gallery
Spring Arts Tower on the Mezzanine Level
453 South Spring Street (on the corner of 5th and Spring)
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Please come down and check out the show!