Organic Light Pan

Congratulations on Eid Al-Fitr! The moon was seen this evening, September 20th 2009, marking Shawwal 1, 1430 and the beginning of Eid Al-Fitr.

 

Eid, as the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him said,  is a day of Eating and Drinking and Remembering God.  So lets!

Congratulations to all who have fasted the Blessed month of Ramadan.  May you all be rewarded to the level of your efforts.

The crescent moon of Shawwal 1430 was not seen this evening Saturday September 19th.  With that Eid will commence on Monday September 21st. The photo above is the portion of the sky where the crescent would have been had it been visible.

I extend my wishes for a wonderful Eid Al-Fitr to all.  May it be a day of eating and drinking and Remembering your Lord.

Now available from Organic Light Press – Custom Fine Art Posters.  These posters are printed to the same exacting quality as the Fine Art Photographs using archival Epson K3 pigments and printed on a high quality satin finish poster paper.  These custom posters offer quality, longevity, resolution, and cost that is unrivaled by ordinary offset printed posters.  They are 18 x 24″ or 20 x 24″ in size depending on the image format and are shipped rolled in a sturdy tube and arrive ready for framing or hanging.  The are $25 each.  Visit the Organic Light Photography website’s Press page to order your set of 4 today!

After The Rain

Another Time

Autumn Meadow

Last Light

Ramadan Mubarak to all!  This evening August 21st, 2009 at 8:06 pm PDT the new crescent moon of Ramadan 1430, was sighted by a group of over 30 men and women, not counting the numerous children as well at Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve, just west of Palo Alto, CA in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  We had clear skies with some dark thick marine layer atmospherics close to the horizon.  It was a fine crescent that was about 3.5 degrees in altitude above the horizon and at a true azimuth of 265 degrees.

The group of sighters started out at about 20 people and over the next 15 minutes it grew to well over 35 people.  As the evening progressed everyone became quite joyful that the Blessed Month of Ramadan was upon us.  As the moon approached the horizon, we packed up and headed off into the night with the intention of commencing our Fast for the next 29 or 30 days, until we see the next new moon.  So Congratulations to all for having another opportunity to benefit from Ramadan.  May all your prayers and fasting be accepted this month.

Six new photos have been released on the Organic Light Photography website. 

The website has also been updated with a new feature that allows you to see the photos super-sized!  Just click on the “details” button below each individual photo in the gallery pages to see them BIG!  The feature is not available for every photo on the website but over time more and more photos will get updated.  The detail of Large Format film is astounding and can only be appreciated in large images.  The photos are even better in person as 16 x 20 inch enlargements or bigger.  Visit an upcoming show to see them.

Enjoy.

A new special workshop is being offered on how to find and photograph the Moon, and in particular, the new crescent moon.  To find out more information and to reigister check the Workshop Page on the Website and Register Today!  Only 19 days left before the next new moon!

The 2009 – 1430/1431 Rahima Foundation Calendar will be featuring the Organic Light Photograpy photo Calm Tarn shown below.

This will be the 10th consecutive year that Rahima Foundation has chosen one of Organic Light’s photos exclusively for its calendar. Rahima Foundation is a local non-profit food bank in Santa Clara County that partners with Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose, CA. It has been serving the the poor and needy since 1993 with food and financial aid for medical and basic utilities and other need-in-kind services. It also provides education scholarships to needy graduating high school students to help them realize their dream of going to college. It is a top rate organization and one that I am proud to be a supporter of. Visit their website and consider making a donation. They really need the help in helping the poor – now more than ever.

Peace – Youssef

The new crescent moon (or Hilal in Arabic) of the 7th month of the Islamic Calendar, known as Rajab, was sighted this evening at 8:40 pm PDT from Russsian Ridge Open Space Preserve in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It was a perfect afternoon with subtle but stunning colors and atmospherics.  For moons, it just does not get better than this one.  More on the afternoon preceeding this photo in a later post.  Enjoy!

Well it is finally over. The 2009 Open Studio exhibit and sale is closed – for now anyway. It was an exciting couple of months getting ready for this year’s show. I had a somewhat of a slow start, but really ramped up the preparations in the last month.

First I needed to advertise the exhibit beyond what the Silicon Valley Open Studios organization does. I printed 2500 4×6 inch post cards and mailed one to every person who ever bought a photo from me in the past or ever placed their name on my mailing list. This amounted to about 1/5th of the total number of cards printed. The rest were distributed throughout my neighborhood – about 1500 cards. That was a monumental feat – oops I mean feet, that is my feet were hating me for this. In fact every foot in my household hated me for it.

Each card had printed on back the details of the show dates and times as well as a special promotion I was running. Each card also had a unique code number that was randomly generated and randomly assigned a dollar value of $10, $25, $50 or $100! To find out what dollar amount was on that card, the holder of that card would need to come to the show. Then what ever amount came up from the database could be deducted from the purchase price of any photo, note card or calendar the patron wanted. I thought it was a pretty novel idea. In fact it worked very well. More on this below.

This year I dedcided to open my studio two of the three weekends in May when the Silicon Valley Open Studios organization sponsors and advertises this great event. On the first weekend the weather forecast was calling for rain on both days. On Friday evening it did start to rain and so instead of setting my exhibit street-fair style under canopy tents, I did an emergency house re-arrangement and moved everything inside. My living room and dining room were trasformed in to a temporary art gallery.

It worked out well but all was not good. Saturday morning as I was putting the final touches to the gallery, I see a City of San Jose car drive by my house. Ten minutes later its parked in front of my house and the driver is questioning me about my signs and if I want them back! He tells me that it is illegal to post any signs on city property, even on trees! And that if he sees my signs again, I will be fined! Well I had placed 15 signs out and around my neighborhood to help direct people to the exhibit, kind of like a bread trail of sorts. He pulls 6 signs from his back seat of his car, gives them to me, and leaves. Well that left 9 signs out and about and fearing getting in trouble I went out and collected the rest. I then placed two signs on my truck and left it at one end of my block and two more signs on my wifes car and placed it on the other end of my block, it was better than nothing and at least now the signs were not on city prpoerty. However, I felt like this year’s exhibit was going to be a bust – rain and NO SIGNS.

Well it turned out that every sale I made that first weekend came from patrons and neighborhood folks that had one of my promotion cards!

Come the second weekend, I borrowed some cars and parked them in various locations throughout the neighbor hood with those great big yellow signs directing people to the exhibit. Now this time instead of rain, we had temperatures from 94 degrees on Saturday to 102 degrees on Sunday and very little wind! Ouch! And of course this time I did set up the exhibit street-fair style in my driveway. You just can never win sometimes. But again except for one sale, all those who made a purchase did so because they had a promotion card.

All in all, over the two weekends, this year’s Open Studio turned out to be one of my all time highest grossing exhibits. So a BIG Thank You to all those who came by. You truly made this year’s effort worthwhile, and you are definitely appreciated and this will not go un-rewarded in the future. Just wait and see.

This weekend, May 2-3 and two weeks later, May 16-17 I will be opening my studio to visitors and past patrons as part of the Silicon Valley Open Studios. This event takes place every year on the first three weekends in May. This will be the second time my studio is participating.

I am also holding a promotion this year that could earn my visitors upto $100 towards a photograph. I have sent out postcards to all my patrons and anyone who has had an interest in Organic Light. Each postcard has a unique ‘Value Code’ printed on it that was randomly generated. Each random uniqe code has a dollar value assigned to it which could worth $10, $25, $50 or $100!

Now I know it is a bit late for tomorrow, but if you contact me in the coming week via email with your name and mailing address, then I can send you a card for the upcoming Studio show on May 16-17th.

For more information visit the Silicon Valley Open Studios website and check out My Page on the site.