my top photos of 2008

These were my top choices of photos for 2008. For the full story that accompanied some of these photos in the 12-31-08 issue of the Irrigator, click on the link to the website here.The 2008 AMGEN tour of California pedals through Patterson en route to San Jose via Del Puerto Canyon and Mt. Hamilton.

A pair of Pitman High students ready the arrival of their dairy cows at the Stanislaus County Fair in August.

Family members grieve the loss of their loved ones in a fatal canal accident near Westley that claimed 7 lives and received national media attention.
I took this photo while hiking through Henry Coe State Park in late March, during my attempt to traverse the Diablo Range from Morgan Hill to Patterson.
Patterson's Greg Werne helps rescue thousands of catfish that were pulled up in vehicles by tow truck driver Doug Borges from the Delta Mendota Canal in January.

Lynda Zaragoza is named to the Miss Patterson court during the 2008 Miss Patterson pageant at the Apricot Fiesta.
Torreadors return to Patterson during the Festa de Espiritu Santu's (F.D.E.S.) bloodless bullfight. The bullfighters are all volunteers who chose to enter the ring at their own risk. Some used whatever they could to draw the bull's attention, like this spongebob blanket. I also saw people using umbrellas... it was so cool.
A structure fire off of Loquat Ave. in the Patterson colony, started by scrap metal recyclers using blow torches to retrieve the metal. The structures were total losses.
Some huge windstorms trapped a few Patterson residents' vehicles in late May.

Stanislaus County Sheriff's deputies Eugene Day and Matthew Wagner make a routine traffic stop on Del Puerto Ave. in front of the Total Discount Store.
The Stanislaus County Sheriff's Dive team assesses the recovery efforts that will need to be undertaken to retrieve two vehicles and and the victims trapped in the waters of the Delta Mendota Canal.
Construction slowly continued on the homes at Diablo Grande over the year despite the water woes and uncertainty of the resort's future.
A patch of California Poppies opens for the morning sun near Del Puerto Canyon's historic gateway. One of the largest displays of wildflowers in years could be witnessed over the spring season.
A crop duster crashed in a field off of Marshall road in mid July. The pilot escaped the burning wreck by jumping from the plane as it fell towards the ground. He then hitched a ride back to his car and checked himself into the hospital.

The colors of a setting sunset reflect off of the smooth foundation of the Patterson Business Park's newest building after a Summer storm late in May. The 580,000 square foot McShane Corp building awaits the installation of it's concrete walls, shown in the lower right quadrant of the photo.
Stanislaus County Supervisor Jeff Grover smirks as he listens to the many pleas of Patterson and West Side residents for the county NOT to continue business with West Park developer Jerry Kamilos during a meeting April 22nd. Supervisor Jim DeMartini is seated at his left.
Left over wreckage from the motorcycle that claimed the life of Patterson Planning Commissioner Jim McCluskey as he rode his bicycle along Diablo Grande Parkway in August.
Patterson FFA student Evan Bachelder takes a nap in his pigs' pen after tending to the animals during opening weekend of the Stanislaus County Fair.
San Francisco all girl rock band "Tinkture" plays during Patterson rock festival "Hellapop" in a garage on Ash Ave, along with many many other bands.
A vegetation fire burns 30 or so acres of thick riverside vegetation near Crows Landing August 11th.

Doug Borges of Borges Auto Service, pulls the second of two vehicles involved in a deadly Delta Mendota Canal accident, from the water around midnight. Investigators photograph the scene and cover up the bodies.
Del Puerto Creek west of Patterson flows close to it's highest for the winter/spring season of 2008.
05-26-08--Darrell and 13 week old son Miles Triano reverently visited the various grave sites of those who have served in the name of our nation, after the Memorial day services Monday at the Patterson District Cemetery.
Dominic Verducci ollies the auditorium 10 stair after the last day of school in May.
Eight year old Nicole Ramirez suffers from severe aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder in which too few red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets are produced leaving her susceptable to sickness. In order to help prevent further sickness, Nicole is forced to play indoors, but finds refuge in her room where she can play for hours with her dolls and doll house.
Patterson and Central valley residents experienced poor air quality as more than 1,000 wildfires started by lightnign strikes burned in Northern California in late June.
UC Merced Anthropologists and county coroners work to dig up the remains of a 'Jane Doe' buried in the Patterson District Cemetery in 1971 after she was discovered with multiple stab wounds in the Delta Mendota canal. Stanislaus County Sheriffs detectives watch from behind, they hope to use modern technology to help identify the woman and hopefully find the womans' murderer. Later in the year investigators identified the body as San Francisco's Mary Alice Willey.
Homes slowly go up on a terrace on Golf Canyon Ct. in Diablo Grande in March.
Diablo Grande's Ranch Course and tract homes photographed in March.
An empty lot on Foxy ct. in Diablo Grande's custom built estate home sites photographed in October.
Patterson Mayor Becky Campo celebrates her re-election with friends food and drinks at Las Gaviotas Mexican Restaurant on November 4th.
The mood at mayoral candidate Luis Molina's campain party November 4th, was a little more somber as attendees watch the television for updates on the national election results, while Molina checks his cell phone and computer for updates on the local election.
Audiorama plays at the Emulsified Music festival in downtown Patterson October 18th.

Andre Smith from 'Nadine the Band' plays the drums on a closed of section of S. Del Puerto Avenue during the Emulsified Music Festival which featured 16 bands playing live
Farming is still the main activity to occur on the grounds of the proposed West Park inland port site in Crows Landing, as tractors use the defunct airfield as a means to travel between farms.
Record crowds filled North and South Parks over the Apricot Fiesta weekend.
Some friends enjoy the beer garden at the Apricot Fiesta during Friday night of the pageant. Many former and current Patterson residents converge on Las Palmas ave during the extent of the Fiesta to reunite.
Real Estate auction signs and foreclosure notices begin to trickle into Patterson in February.

Police and Paramedics stand watch as the new Mexican restaurant, Hacienda Arteaga, burns in early August.
The concrete walls go up on the 580,000 square foot foundation to Mc Shane corp's newest distribution center building.
The 2008 Miss Patterson pageant contestants take the stage during opening night of the Apricot Fiesta.
Political signs begin to cover the city as election day draws nearer.
Carlos Roque (right) and a woman who wished to remain annonymous, stand beside a roadside memorial put in place by Roque who lost his son to an auto accident six years ago at the same site of Monday night's fatal accident that killed Monica Martinez and three year old son Eloy. The woman, who witnessed the accident and tried to help the dying victims, says she hasn't been able to work for the past few days as the horrific details of Monday night's accident are stuck with her.
Patterson High School campus security Eddie Thompson helps keep students safe at the school in the wake of a gang brawl a year earlier.

Concrete walls go up at Walnut Grove Elementary School's new joint use gymnasium.

Construction continues at Walnut Grove's classrooms.

West Park consultants try to convice Patterson residents about the good things that West Park will bring, during an informational meeting held at City Hall.

the year in sports photos 2008

2008 brought about many exciting and memorable moments in Patterson sports. Many thanks to those players and coaches that allow me to follow them along for the wins and the losses. These are some of my favorites.

some end of the year panoramic photos

Going through all of the photos that I've taken for the Patterson Irrigator over the past year is quite a daunting task. For the past three and a half years that I've been at the Irrigator we've done an end of the year re-cap of top stories and top photos, and this year was no different. So I narrowed my selection of photographs down to about 30 news photos and 10 sports photos. I'll be posting them along with a story I wrote to go along with it on this blog site here soon.

But going through all the photos I came across these 13 panoramic photos and two sequences that I put together for the newspaper. Of all of them, half were published, but all of them I thought should receive some sort of special posting considering alot more time and post photographic effort went into making them.

So what constitues as a digital panoramic photo?

For me, they are multiple photos that are stitched together with the help of Photoshop to create one very wide angle of view.

Double click on the photos themselves to get a larger more detailed view of the scene at hand, but remember these photos are all copyrighted by either the Patterson Irrigator or me, Elias H. Funez

In this photo of the Hacienda Arteaga fire on Hwy 33 in Patterson August 21 2008, four images were taken at the same shutter speed, aperture setting, and focal point with the idea in mind that I would be stitching the photos together later. A tripod is recomended for taking these types of photos, but a steady hand and careful photographic technique should get you away from the tripod and out in the field.
This shot of the sunrise along side the McMansions of Diablo Grande one morning in October, was a stitching together of three photos. I turn to panoramic shots of things that require a wider more encompassing view, when my wide angle lens won't capture everything, or I wish for more detail and a larger photo.
This photo of students at PHS getting out of a day at school on the 9th street side was only two photographs.
When members of the General Plan Advisory Committee were confronted by landowner Jeff Arambel, and his desire to develop this area of Del Puerto Canyon just West of Interstate 5, I trodded out to the open range for a wider view, something that showed the entire area in question. This one is about 5 photos, and if you look closely on the upper right hand corner of the photograph, a truck can be seen on I-5 and the Kohl's distribution center can be seen beyond it.

Two photographs stitched together for the P.R.I.D.E. (Patterson recognizing individuals determined to excel) brochure that is handed out to perspective scholarship donors and those in attendance of the P.R.I.D.E. scholarship awards night.
Here's a sequence of seven shots of an amazing Patterson sk8er by the name of Dominic Verducci. It took him a couple of attempts, but by the second try he successfully ollies and clears the PHS auditorium 10 -stair. Some photos were needed for a story on the fact that the city has no designated skate area or skate park for area skaters to utilize. It was kind of a last minute assignment, so I just drove around until I found some skaters doing their thing. The skate park has been approved as a part of the Patterson Community Center master plan and a designer (Wally Hollyday) and some initial concepts have come forward as a result.
This was three photos taken off of Jennings road just east of Patterson on a partly cloudy day in January. I really love those old oak trees along the river there. Its scenic beauty always makes the drive to or from Modesto a little more peaceful.
The Irrigator received some numbers that showed the population of the city of Patterson slowing drastically. So I traveled to the empty corner of the Patterson Garden's subdivision in early May, where I climbed the fence for a wide angle shot. However even standing on top of the fence there I couldn't get it all into one shot, so again a panorama. Looks like alot of space to wait for Patterson Gardens to build out. Ahhh, the highly anticipated coming of TACO BELL! Two photographs stitched together. They don't all work out seamlessly though. If you look closely there is a slight discrepancy in the shadow that is created from the car that is ordering at the drive-thru speaker. That photo of the two cars at left, was placed over the photo used on the right and some of the information gets lost a little bit, but the high angle drive thru parking lot shot was still successful in my mind.

The first major morning fog in town for the 2008-2009 winter season prompted me to scurry out my front door one morning and rush to find some subjects to photograph before the fog lifted. Got a shot of the highschool baseball field in the fog, then off to the rail right of way and a shot of the train tracks disappearing into the fog. I could tell the fog was lifting fast and ran to the second story of the City Hall building where some friends in the planning department kindly let me onto the balcony there, where I took these two photos and stitched them together.
This shot was created after Pacific Sod announced that it was closing it's business in September, showing some of the acres and acres of sod in place off of Loquat ave in the north Patterson Colony.
This one could be deceiving. Not many people think that this is multiple shots, but there was no way I could cram the entirety of the scene into one picture, considering I was already crammed against the backyard fence of a Heartland Ranch home where the weeds were as tall as I was. This was taken in three photos.

Two photos were stitched together to create this panorama of the Longs Distribution center in the Patterson business park, after Longs had announced the sale of their corporation to CVS pharmacy.

foggy days and foggy nights

foggy daysand foggy nights
have returned to Patterson
so drive safely... or don't drive at all

don't trash the canyon please!

So I got off of a long shift yesterday at work and decided to go to Del Puerto Canyon to admire the natural beauty that borders the western edge of our city there. Along the drive I noticed a female deer (doe) grazing in the tall grass between the canyon road and I-5 where the city's General Plan Advisory Committee suggested expanding the city's borders for the purpose of general commercial and estate residential housing. But I continued on, stopping to admire the site for just a moment. The sunset colors were soon about to peak and I had not yet decided what vantage point to assume, however, when rounding a corner an infamous pile of canyon trash caught my eye, neatly placed along side the road at the Eagle Rock (Graffiti Rock) turnout.

My first thoughts, of course, were to search through the bags to hopefully find a couple articles of junk mail with an address so that I could politely return the trash to its rightfull owner. Who knows, maybe they accidentally forgot their trash there and were hoping someone would return it to them... but I doubt it.

My rules for returning canyon trash to its rightful owner require me to find at least two articles of thrown away trash with the same address, that proves to me that it was much less of an accident if I found just one address.

This type of thing happens to me pretty often, unfortunately, when I go to the canyon. Last time, in the exact same turnout, I found boxes and bags of random household trash with three articles of thrown away mail with the same address... bingo! So I loaded it all in my car and returned it to its rightful owner at a house with a Tracy address in an upscale housing tract neigborhood complete with its own manmade lake. I can only imagine the look on their faces when opening the front door and finding all of their trash back on their porch after thinking they left it 30 miles away. I just hope that they learn not to do it again... especially not in Del Puerto Canyon! That's the worst place to leave your trash because hardly no one, including landowners, go out there to pick it up.

I'm just glad that I didn't find anything toxic in those bags of trash, for I've had to step in front of target shooters to grab one of their targets that happened to be a CAR BATTERY! sitting on a rock right inside the creek bed!!!! First these guys were shooting oak trees, and after I explained to them that they are slowly killing the tree they started shooting the car battery in the creek bed... @#$%@#$^%

After searching and retrieving the bags of trash, some that had rolled down the hill, only one address showed up. It was at the back of a training packet for KFC workers from store #261, the owners of which live in Merced. I thought it was kind of funny that one of the sections in the training packet was "PRACTICE CONTROLLING WASTE".

After further analysis of the trash, it was obvious that the bags were left there after someone collected all the trash in the Graffiti Rock area. Much of it was target practice, boxes shot full of holes, empty boxes of ammo, fast food trash from Jack In the Box, Wendys, Carl's Jr, In N' Out, discarded picnic supplies, beer bottles, etc. So to whoever it was that took the time to collect the trash...THANK YOU! I could fit all but two bags into the back seat and trunk of my car and will go back for the rest later if someone hasn't decided to use it as target practice. Now if we can only get the high school to go pick up their old gym lockers that wound up out there after the 1998 remodel.