Casa Dragon on sale at Feria From Afar / June 15, 2020 by Matthew Straka

This week, I have a few prints on sale for the Feria from Afar event that is put on by the Casa del Herrero. Purchases not only help the Casa sustain in it’s funding but it also benefits local artists by splitting the profits 50%. Under normal circumstances, this even is held in person on the grounds of the Casa, but due to the recent shutdown, they are putting their event on-line for the first time ever.

Casa Dragon was photographed on the Casa grounds in what is known as the "Arizona Garden” a few years back. They had just asked the Santa Barbara Garden Club to come in a do a small re-design and clean up this part of the garden that had been neglected over the years. This stand of Dracaena draco trees has always been a stand-out on the property and I requested to go in and photograph it before the clean up began. It had always been a favorite spot of mine on the property as they tower over the Arizona Garden and must have been some of the original plantings of the estate. They are by far some of the larger specimens to be found in the Santa Barbara area. Many might be familiar with these stand out trees. There is a wonderful specimen in Alameda park and they can be seen around town in many private gardens and as a few street trees.

If you’d like to see the other images available for purchase, please visit the official Casa website where they have a link to the event:

All items will be on sale from June 15-19th.

https://www.casadelherrero.com/

Light It Blue hits Santa Barbara / May 20, 2020 by Matthew Straka

On Thursday May 14th the City of Santa Barbara started participating in the Light It Blue campaign to honor health care professionals and frontline, essential workers in the Covid-19 epidemic. I was asked to take photos of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum Sea Center which was being lit up in a one night event by local artists. Gartner Design Company pulled together a great team including The Environment Makers, Ethan Turpin Art and Design, SBCAW and Bella Vista Designs. Having worked with most of this crew before, it was great to hang out and capture them setting up and witnessing the final, glorious effect.

Congratulations to the whole crew and a huge thank you to our local health care professionals and frontline essential workers. While the Sea Center event was a one night affair, several other landmark buildings are lit up around the Santa Barbara area throughout May including Cottage Hospital, the Santa Barbara Mission and the Lobero Theatre.

#LightItBlue

The sound of one band flapping... / May 17, 2020 by Matthew Straka

seeyoutonite

flapping, Flapping returns with a new album after a 24 year hiatus.

Every time I would see Joe Woodard for the last decade or so he would say, “We got a new album in the works, can you do the photos?” or something similar. Always game for laying something out for the Flap I would eagerly accept and then not hear from Joe, like ever, until I would see him again and he would say, “We got a new album in the works, can you do the photos?”… this goes on and on until around a year or so ago and Joe finally writes me to say, “no, for real this time.”, and he wasn’t joking. For real this time.

There aren’t too many bands still around that I have such an exquisite tie too. Flapping, in it’s different iterations, and I have been sniffing around the same blocks for years. It was early show’s at the long-lost and well remembered Mermaid Cafe inside of Cominichi’s, then later listening to the mixes of the upcoming TEX album in Bruce’s Studio A behind my house on Montgomery Street on those eternally lingering summer days. Or so it seemed. True salad days for a kid like me. Witnessing the generational hand shake between these musicians was a great thing to watch, especially, right in my own backyard. I was lucky enough then to get a few photos included in that first CD layout with that killer cover by Kim Reierson, as I am lucky enough now, to get the artwork on their new album, 24 years later. I’m as happy as a clam to be a part of this lasting legacy known as flapping, Flapping.

I’m including some of the artwork of the album in the gallery below. Lot’s of curtains, huh. I’ll throw in a few earlier photos as well: that Cominichi show and some Studio A shenanigans, why not? On the player down below is track 10 from the album, Ruffriff, because I like my rock Riff! The orange link will get you to their bandcamp page and if you go to the Household Ink Records web site you can order a CD, go figure.

'Certainty' made it to YourDailyPhotograph.com!! / April 27, 2020 by Matthew Straka

I’m excited to share that my photograph, ‘Certainty’, will be featured on the website YourDailyPhotograph.com soon. If you are not familiar with YourDailyPhotograph.com, they are a resource for photography collectors and curators and release photographs for sale every day and reach subscribers in over 74 countries. What??!! They put out a lot of great photographers including; Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andreas Gursky, Richard Misrach, Andre Kertesz, Edward Burtynsky and other photography legends, to be included in that kind of company is humbling. I set a limited edition number of prints to be available through them if you are interested in purchasing one.

If you’d like to subscribe to their daily email here is a link:

https://www.yourdailyphotograph.com/eng

I’ll also share a link directly to their website when it posts, which is here:

http://eepurl.com/g1nonv

The Backside of Rosa / November 5, 2018 by Matthew Straka

I have been going out to our local Channel Islands for some time now, especially Santa Rosa Island, but I had never made it all the way to the ‘other’ side of the island. We just got back from this quick, yet epic trip and I’ll get back with this later with a few tales from our hike and camping trip, but for now, Advil, dinner and a nap.

Hummingbird Man / February 24, 2018 by Matthew Straka

The Hummingbird Man of Ellwood,

and his giant Christmas cactus specimen.