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

Police shot a homeless man brandishing a knife around 1:30 p.m. today shutting down several blocks around 6th and Stanford. The ensuing investigation prevented access to the UCEPP building where the Skid Row Photography Club holds its meetings.

According to an eye-witness, the police officers asked the man to put the knife down. When he allegedly lunged at them, they opened fire and shot him. The police then proceeded to handcuff him and called an ambulance.

The eye-witness noted that the ambulance took an unusually long time to arrive, upwards of 20 minutes. Normally emergency services arrive very quickly in Skid Row as their station is just a few blocks away. The suspect was still alive when loaded into the ambulance, but his current condition is unknown.

The Skid Row Photography Club, of which I am a co-founder along with Michael Blaze, meets every Tuesday at 3 p.m. at the UCEPP center. We have a gallery show coming up starting with a soft opening in the beginning of November at Stella Dottir's shop and gallery. The official opening will be during the Downtown Art Walk on the 13th of November.

I am very excited about the opening. The group has produced an amazing body of work. Too much to display in just one show. The website will be up soon so and you'll be able to see this wonderful work for yourself.

The crime scene from an officer involved shooting inconveniently blocks access to the Skid Row Photography Club meeting in this photo from earlier today.

The UCEPP building is inaccessible for the Skid Row Photo Club meeting due to an investigation of an officer involved shooting that happened earlier in the day.

Update: ABC 7 has a story along with video and photos from my eye-witness.  

I have an addiction to photo gear. I own a crapload of equipment and I'm always buying new stuff to the delight of my accountant wife. Along the way I've gone through a number of camera bags, each progressively better than the last.

I started out with a smallish Lowepro bag when I bought my first SLR. It had this incredibly dangerous problem in which the plastic buckle that held strap on would randomly come loose. I remember when I was at Samy's Camera talking to a saleperson and told him about my problem. He said that's why I should use Tamrac, as it's the best bag around. Ever since then I've been a Tamrac guy.

I started out with and older version of the Tamrac 5502, which is a relatively small bag. It worked fine when I had one camera, one lens and one flash. As my photo equipment collection expanded, I quickly outgrew the 5502. I currently use it to hold my Sony PCM-D50 audio recorder, Sennheiser MD46 ENG mic, Sennheiser HD 25-1 II headphones and various cables.

While I still used this bag for my SLR, I bought a nice selection of medium format Mamiya cameras and lenses from eBay on the cheap. I needed a giant bag to hold all of them. Tamrac used to make a bag specifically for medium format cameras called the Tamrac 622 [photo here]. They no longer make it, but I found one on eBay and purchased it. It's a great (both in size and functionality) bag. I don't shoot medium format as much as I would like, but at least it's well protected in that massive 622.

My next bag was the Tamrac 5608. The 5608 holds two cameras with lenses attached along with several other lenses, flashes, HV batteries, etc. This worked well for me until I picked up the tack-sharp Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS lens. Unfortunately I couldn't leave this lens on the cameras that were in the 5608. At one point I missed an amazing shot of a hawk while I scrambled to change the lens.

The missed shot happened during my vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my lovely wife Penelope. Shortly after that we hit a local photo store where I purchased the Tamrac 617, also known as the Super Pro 17. It holds two cameras with lenses attached, including one with the 70-200 on it. It also has room for another lens, a flash, cables and various other accessories. I now use my 5608 to hold my flash gear. The 617 is awesome and is my current camera bag.

The Pro 17 has one problem, it doesn't have room for my laptop. Because of this I have a backpack with my laptop and cables in it and a camera bag. This results in me frequently being without my camera as it's a pain to carry two heavy bags. I recently went to Samy's to check out a bag that I've had my eye on for some time now.

The bag I've been lusting over is the Tamrac 619 also known as the Pro 19. This bag is awesome. It's wider than the Pro 17 so it has room for two or three more lenses. It also has side pockets which will let me stow either my audio equipment or HV battery packs. Finally, and most importantly, it has room for a laptop and cables.

I ordered the Pro 19 tonight from amazon. Once I have it, I will rarely be without my camera gear. Hopefully this will allow me to take more photos for fun, as opposed to just shooting when I'm on assignment. I'm really looking forward to its arrival, Tamrac bags are wonderful and I fully endorse and recommend them.

I shot this gallery yesterday and my editor and I turned it around in less than 24 hours. You can view the gallery here on Wired, if you like it, give it a digg.

Screen-grab hosted by flickr. 

Awesome, internet-venerable website BoingBoing posted up a link and photo from my Industrial Landscapes series. It doesn't say so anywhere on my site, but limited edition archival prints of most images are available to purchase in both 13"x19" and 17"x22" formats. Email me for price and availability.  

I have somewhat of a backlog of galleries for Wired.com right now. Earlier this week one of them posted, as well as a photo of my laptop. In case you were wondering I wrote all the captions and intros for the galleries, but the laptop one wasn't written by me.

This gallery is about a new technology that will allow a microscope to be squeezed onto a microchip.

That's my laptop.

This gallery is about a scientists at Caltech who have shrunken a still down to micro-size.

I took some photos of a beautiful sunset behind some of the Windmills near Palm Springs a few weeks ago. Here is the resulting HDR image: