w a l d o 6 4 7 i m a g e s

About Galleries

My Photography : Welcome to my galleries! A lot of my galleries are unlisted or password protected. For unlisted galleries you will need to double-click on the actual URL for each gallery, or paste it into your web browser. For password protected galleries, there is hint included, which hopefully will remind those who have already received the password. Please email me if you do not have the needed URL(s) or password(s). I began shooting photos in the late 1950's at age 10, with a Kodak box-style "Brownie" camera (the reflex type where you looked down into the top of the camera). Nowadays, trying out different B&W film emulations in Adobe Lightroom's Develop Presets, has shed some light on why I took a whole lot of boring non-descript photos with Panatomic-X film, even with a snap-on yellow filter! I had two very special teachers in those early years: Brett Weston and Gus Bundy. They were wonderfully creative people, and I'd like to think that some of that magic, in being able to capture extraordinary images, really comes from them. My dad was also very interested in photography, and in his earlier years, he had bulk-loaded his Leica with 35mm movie film. Finally my uncle Jay was a principal in a camera store in Santa Barbara and also enthralled with photography. Several of the family cameras came from Jay's shop, including my stepfather Jan's Nikon F, which I still have. My next camera was a 1956 Leica IIIg, with an f/2.8 lens that you had to pull out and twist to the right. It had been my mother's and she passed it on to me, when my stepfather Jan got his Nikon F, and I headed off to boarding school. In April 2008, I attended the 50th anniversary of the founding of Dunn School, in Los Olivos, California — where I had attended 7th through 12th grade. There were a lot of excellent teachers there, including the founder, Anthony B. Dunn, who continues to have an impact on my creative work, some 43 years later. Pictures from the 50th anniversary celebration are available under the Events menu, as an password protected gallery. In the 1970's, as my kids came on the scene, I stepped up to a Minolota SRT-101 (and later an SRT-102 second body to handle B+W film or another lens). Single-lens reflex made all the difference! No more parallax problems! I never did set up that dream dark room, and zoom lenses were way too expensive, but I still had tons of fun. My 5 kids provided excellent subjects, as they, and now their kids, continue to do so today! (It's funny: I hadn't been thinking of myself as a people photographer, but after two family reunions, my vision has broadened here.) Fast forward to 1996 — I'd been away from photography for quite a while, and a vacation to California was looming — a Canon Sureshot 80 Tele film camera filled the bill. I would be shooting with this camera for 8 years (including a trip to Singapore, Nepal & Tibet in Spring 2001). Another great camera! Like they say: "The best camera in the world is the one you have with you!" In June 2004, a visit to the local Apple store convinced me it was time to go digital. My wife already had a Nikon Coolpix 4300, but I wanted something pocket-sized to take with me everywhere, and take advantage of that digital "no film". I settled on a Casio EZ-340, a 4 megapixel camera with Pentax optics. I'd actually seen the Pentax cousin of this camera at MacWorld and had greatly admired it. I've shot several thousand pictures with the Casio, and thoroughly enjoy this camera, and continue to use it as a pocket camera today, for occasional shots, especially out of the car. The challenge arose when I found the need for higher resolution pictures, especially low-light situations where flash wasn't appropriate, or generally where my Casio point 'n shoot didn't have enough umpf... During a visit to Muir Woods in 2006, my son Tim began extolling the virtues of digital SLRs, using new words, like "RAW" and "white balance". My interest was piqued, and for this, I'm truly grateful to him. In December 2006, a colleague brought a new Nikon D80 back to the office for the rest of us to look at. Needless to say, I was entranced. Another colleague also purchased a D80, but I finally decided on the D50 a couple of weeks later. Price and size were the main factors. I wasn't ready to fill up my hard drive(s) any faster than necessary, and 6 megapixels seemed like enough. Some day, perhaps, a D80 might be added, but at that time I was fine with the D50. By the way, I'm fine with Canons, too. My son Tim and several old & good friends are Canon shooters. They suggested a Canon SLR, but my wife already had a Nikon N65 film camera at home with two lenses, so I decided to stay with Nikon to share those lenses. For most of 2007, I shot primarily with the Nikon D50 with a Tamron 28-200mm and a Nikkor 50mm prime lens. I also used my wife's Tamron 70-300mm and the N65's 28-80mm kit lens, and occasionally rented other lenses and equipment, as needed for shoots. Finally I had access the zoom lenses I'd once only dreamed of, and that dream darkroom went digital with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, beginning with its public beta. I'd been using Apple's iPhoto previously, and didn't yet have a CPU capable of running Apple's Aperture. Today I'm using a 24" iMac at home, and also have Aperture. I still tend to mostly use Lightroom though, since I'm more familiar with its tools. I working on learning Aperture... In October 2007, I had the opportunity to purchase a friend's Nikon D80 with the vertical grip. I've been very happy with this camera. Like David Pogue says, "We don't buy film anymore; we buy hard drives, instead." My wife Sue is shooting with the D50 now, and it's available as a backup camera for my event shoots, if needed. Please enjoy my galleries! - Chris

My Photography

Welcome to my galleries! A lot of my galleries are unlisted or password protected. For unlisted galleries you will need to double-click on the actual URL for each gallery, or paste it into your web browser. For password protected galleries, there is hint included, which hopefully will remind those ...

Updated: Jun 11, 2009 1:11pm PST

Why waldo647? : Where did the waldo come from? It actually has nothing to do with the game. Back in the late 1980's, some unsung hero made a startup screen on the Mac Plus that looked like Walden Pond. I was searching for a corresponding hard drive name to match this miraculous image, which had a seemingly Ansel Adam quality (and was seen every time I started up my computer) — please remember these were real b&w images, i.e. 1-bit, black or white pixels only! I decided on "waldo", in honor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. This hard drive name continued with me over the years, in various forms (waldo II, waldo IIci, etc). My older son Tim even had Waldo Jr. for a while. When I started at Apple in 1993, the Internet was young, and my last name too long, so waldo@apple.com became my email address. Even though I left Apple in 2001, I still have waldo@mac.com. Why waldo647? When I started at Stanford, I had to come up with a university ID. There already was a waldo, so I chose something certain to be unique: waldo647. That became my email address, too. The 647 was for June 1947, my birth month and year. Over time on various other forums and websites, waldo647 became a quick, easy, and unique ID to use, so it began to proliferate. As I pondered a domain name, I thought about a lot of catchy photography names; all the good ones seemed to be taken. I considered ChristopherWesselmanPhotography.com, too. It made a really long URL, and my younger son Chris was already becoming known for his video work in New York, and I wanted to avoid potential confusion. There were also other Wesselmans in the arts and photography. At one point in this process, I Googled myself; and not too surprisingly, waldo647 appeared a bunch of times in the search results. I remembered back to a Steve Jobs pep talk, soon after he'd returned to Apple, about the value of the Apple brand as something unique in the world with considerable value. Not that waldo647 had that kind of value, but it was unique to me. Uniqueness is very important to me, since my own vision, how I see and understand the world around me, is very much part of the images I've been fortunate enough to capture. And, yes, I think there is a lot of luck, and a certain amount of karma, involved. I've just been in too many right places, at just the right time... To honor that uniqueness, I decided on waldo647. Perhaps also to honor whoever created that amazing startup screen on the Mac Plus circa 1987, and, of course, to honor the Waldo: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why waldo647?

soup2nuts (an evolving photo journal) : Forever beta, like life itself... True, life is *not* a dress rehearsal, but it *is* always under construction. Note: click on an image to go into single image mode. Click the title "soup2nuts..." to return to multi-image mode, or select it again from the About menu above.

soup2nuts (an evolving photo journal)

Order prints online : Order prints online Smügmüg is an excellent online photo service, and their help pages should answer any and all questions. Be sure to check their help page on ordering prints of photos. These are private galleries, i.e. not open to the general public on the Internet. You need to use the weblink that came with the email. You can forward that weblink to family and friends; however, it would really be appreciated if it was not posted in a public place. Thanks in advance for honoring this request. Can I order prints? Yes! Smügmüg uses large high-end printers that can make very nice prints. Can I order prints in different sizes? Yes, when you click on Buy, prints are accumulated in your Cart and when you check out, you can specify size, number, etc. Please note: my photos are optimized for 4-by-6 inch prints. If you select larger prints, you may be given the choice of cropping your prints. My suggestion is to use "No crop", even though this can result in 2 extra white borders on the top or sides of larger prints. It's easy to trim off those borders with a paper cutter or scissors. Any cropping, prior to printing, will result in the loss of some of the picture. How about the auto-color? Smügmüg has another option when ordering prints called auto-color. In certain situations, that is a very nice option to have; however, I've spent a lot of time balancing the color in these photos, using a product called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, so you shouldn't need to make any further color adjustments. In fact, I can't actually predict how the prints might turn out, so I would suggest not using auto-color. It says my image needs to be cropped?! Please note: my photos are optimized for either 4-by-6 or 5-by-7 inch prints. You may be given the choice of cropping your prints. My suggestion is to use "No crop", even though this can result in 2 extra white borders on the top or sides of larger prints. It's easy to trim off those borders with a paper cutter or scissors. Any cropping, prior to printing, will result in the loss of some of the image. Can I download photos and print them myself? Yes, you can right-click and download photos. (On a Mac without a two-button mouse, you would need to Control-click). Note: this feature may not be available in certain galleries. I don't like my picture. Can you please remove it? Yes, of course. Please email me, listing the title of the picture(s) you wish to have removed. The title appears under the bottom left-hand corner of each photo. Note: it's the number at the end which is key here. You should be able to copy & paste the entire photo title into an email, if needed.

Order prints online

Order prints online Smügmüg is an excellent online photo service, and their help pages should answer any and all questions. Be sure to check their help page on ordering prints of photos. These are private galleries, i.e. not open to the general public on the Internet. You need to use the weblink that came with the ema ...

Updated: Jun 12, 2009 1:14pm PST

© 2009 waldo647images ~ Christopher Wesselman