For more than half a century, African American photojournalist Henry Hooks documented the diversity of San Bernardino.

He pushed to get the Black community into the city’s newspapers – providing shots to the San Bernardino Sun and the San Bernardino Telegram without pay or a photo credit.

Hooks grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, one of seven children born to Sandy and Georgia Hooks. In 1942, Hooks was inducted into the United States Army Air Force where he served for more than three years as a projectionist and member of the general staff.

After he was discharged, Hooks began working as a government employee at Norton Air Force Base as a quality control supervisor and later enrolled at San Bernardino Valley College to receive a degree in business administration with a minor in photography.

After 18 years at Norton, Hooks was transferred to the Defense Contract Administrative Service in Los Angeles.

After more than 30 years as a government employee, Hooks retired in 1979 and returned to his love of photography by becoming a staff photographer for the Precinct Reporter in San Bernardino. Hooks’ images show how life in San Bernardino used to be and how things have changed over time. He photographed notable public figures from Colin Powell to Leslie Uggams.

While much of Henry Hooks’ work documented the Black community, his body of work chronicled the vast diversity of the San Bernardino area and its cultural evolution over the years. Henry Hooks significantly added to local and African American history through his photographic endeavors in San Bernardino, the place he called home since 1943. Hooks passed away in November 2021.

The San Bernardino County Museum has a collection of photographs of Hooks works that he donated and have been used in an exhibit “Community Chronicles” in 2016.

The San Bernardino County Museum is located at 2024 Orange Tree Lane, at the California Street exit from Interstate 10 in Redlands. The museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. General admission is $10 (adult), $8 (military or senior), $7 (student), and $5 (children ages 6 to 12). Children five and under are admitted free. Museum Foundation members receive a 50% discount. Parking is free and the museum is accessible to persons with disabilities. For more information, visit museum.sbcounty.gov.

The San Bernardino County Museum’s exhibits of regional, cultural and natural history and the Museum’s other exciting events and programs reflect the effort by the Board of Supervisors to achieve the Countywide Vision by celebrating arts, culture, and education in the county, creating quality of life for residents and visitors.

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There is a group of animals in our society who have called Australia home for over two million years.

As we sleep, each night they head out to pollinate and disperse the seeds of our native trees.

As they do, they help our forests flourish. Some travel over 2,000km in a single year, and with night vision better than cats, and a sense of smell equal to dogs, they are a marvel of evolution.

Sadly, most people never get to see these night gardeners, but if they do, it’s probably as a dark shadow passing in the night sky. I am of course talking about Australia’s own Grey-headed Flying-fox.

Often under-appreciated and misunderstood, over the last seven years I’ve been working on a series of Grey-headed Flying-fox (GHFF) images to try to tell their full life story. My hope being that if people can see them more closely and in daylight, they might just appreciate how incredible they are.

One key image I’ve always wanted to capture is a high-speed belly-dip. It’s an important behaviour related to coping with heat and climate change, as they do this to cool off and get a drink. But, it’s also because it’s simply spectacular to watch and makes for a cracking photo.

To catch an image like this, you need one very hot day or a series of very warm days in succession. But the real challenge is to find a place where you can get eye level with the water; for as with most wildlife photography, being eye level when something happens usually makes the best photo.

Having scoped out a few frequent ‘dipping’ spots, I had two options to get eye level. Get a boat with low sides and lay down, lens hanging over the edge, or find somewhere that I could safely stand chest high in water. I chose the ‘stand in water’ option.

Firstly, I could do it easily on my own, standing gave me more manoeuvrability, and secondly, standing allowed me to have my lens closer to the water line.

Even though I’d only be standing in still water at chest depth, I chose to wear a life jacket. If you slip, the last thing you want to be thinking about is trying not to drown whilst you struggle to keep a $24,000, 3kg lens above your head.

Knowing that for the shot I wanted the GHFFs flying towards me but from some distance, it then simply became a matter of waiting for the right weather, standing chest height in water, and hoping that they would belly-dip, my autofocus would be quick enough, my settings would be correct, and that I wouldn’t dunk my lens.

This image took me about five attempts of three hours each. Technically, it achieved what I wanted; a close up of a GHFF doing a high-speed belly-dip.

But does it really achieve what I wanted? Will those who see it appreciate how incredible Grey-headed Flying-foxes are? Well, I’ll leave that to you to answer.

Patrick Stokes will share photos from his trip to the Ukraine.

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center will present local resident and photographer Patrick Stokes who will give an illustrated lecture about his recent experience as a humanitarian aid volunteer in Ukraine. The program will be Thursday at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Stokes spent five weeks this past fall traveling across Ukraine with Siobhan’s Trust, a Scottish-based nonprofit organization that provides food relief to Ukrainians in need across the entire country. With camera in hand, he documented his experience and will share what he gained in this special talk.

Stokes’ presentation will include a brief history of Ukraine, as well as a video and a few of the thousands of photographs he took while volunteering. Immediately following the presentation, there will be a pizza party, meet and greet, and fund-raising event to support Siobhan’s Trust at a location to be announced.

You can get a preview of Stokes’ presentation on Notes From the Aisle Seat, the Opera House podcast hosted by Tom Loughlin. Notes From the Aisle Seat is available wherever podcasts can be found, including Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and Amazon Prime Music, as well as on the Opera House website and YouTube Channel.

Admission to the lecture is free, with donations gratefully accepted. Opera House programming is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and the Ralph Wilson Jr. Arts & Cultural Initiative as administered by the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo.

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center is a member-supported not-for-profit performing arts center with a mission to “present the performing arts for the benefit of our community and region … providing access to artistic diversity … and high quality programming at an affordable price.” It is located in Village Hall in downtown Fredonia. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.fredopera.org.

Edelkrone, the ‘content creation solutions’ company based in Turkey, has officially released its $4,550 tripod that is not only auto-levelling, but has the ability to make pre-planned or remote-controlled movements. 

Initially announced for release in November 2023 but now confirmed for release this month, the Tripod X is primarily for indoor video use as it isn’t weather sealed, and has a ‘spreader’ (a 3-way link between the legs) that can’t be detached.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2TftKoMz6Ks

Making it even more housebound is its hefty 9kg weight. It can hold camera rigs up to 30kg, but can only auto-level with weights up to 20kg.

Power is supplied via a 12V battery that moves the tripods motors at a rate of 2cm per second, and allows approximately 300 height adjustments per charge.

The main selling point to this rather expensive tripod is the ability to make pre-planned movements for beautiful, smooth camera movements. Programming these movements can be made on the tripod body, or remotely via a smartphone app.

The Tripod X integrates with other Edelkrone ‘motion control’ tools from their ecosystem, meaning you can use other sliders, heads and jibs to create other interesting smooth camera movements.

The tripod is now available for pre-order. You can read more about this unique piece of kit on the Edelkrone website.