Let’s face it: Huge crowds of drunk people can be irritating, unless you are also a drunk person. Bay to Breakers, the annual foot race in San Francisco, is mainly a huge crowd of drunk people. And I was not about to irritated.

Which is why, on a Sunday morning at 7 a.m., I was at a party in San Francisco drinking vodka and orange juice with a large group of people dressed as Olympic athletes. We headed to the race along with several hundred people dressed as rainbows and scores of people dressed as leprechauns. By the time we hit the race route, the people who came to the 2012 Bay to Breakers to actually compete in the race had long since finished, and the course was populated by people in all manner of costumes (or none at all) and at all levels of drunkenness.

I came mainly to shoot photos, and as it turned out, drinking vodka beforehand was the best decision I could’ve made. Bay to Breakers is a participatory event. As a participant, I was able to get close to everybody, move easily through the crowd, have the same kind of experience everybody else was having. I passed numerous photographers who were standing on the curb, picking off shots as people walked by. They looked disconnected, awkward.

Of course, if I was actually on assignment for this shoot it would’ve been a sober morning. And I did see some newspaper photogs working the crowd, dutifully gathering names, reporting the event. But I came to shoot for myself, to do some street photography. And to see it all as a participant.

It is a rare and amazing thing to be able to stand in a clearing in the redwoods in Big Sur, look up and see the stars burning bright above me, then look forward and see musicians who I believe to be among the greatest of my generation performing on an outdoor stage, projections flickering on a screen behind them, light bouncing into the trees surrounding them. The Godspeed You! Black Emperor show on April 15 at Fernwood campground in Big Sur was flawless, moving and beautiful. These photos don’t come close to capturing what it was like to be there, but do suggest a bit of what it looked like.

Costumes were handed out before the show. The drummer wore a hat covered in blue lights. The audience was pulled in close and became part of the show. We were taught the words and sang along. During a rare serious moment, we all took a knee. Soon after, a parachute was presented and we all gathered under it, a purple room erected inside of the dirty bar hosting the show. Seventeen minutes after if began, the whole mess ended with a mass sing-a-long: “We’re alive! We’re in love! We’ve got hope, just because!” The two guys who were The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! that night had to make way for two more bands during a five-band set on a Sunday night at The Jury Room in Santa Cruz, California. My friends and I decompressed in the parking lot, wishing we could drop everything and follow them on tour.

When done right, a great rock show can leave you feeling better about the world and your place in it. The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! did it right.

Here again is my annual attempt to sum up 12 months of visual output into a set of favorite images. This group of pictures looks far different than my typical favorite photos from past years, just as this year was far different for me as a photographer. I left my staff job at a newspaper, trading it in for a life as a freelance photographer. Only a half dozen of these 34 favorite photos were produced on assignment for a newspaper. A dozen are from weddings, the rest are images I made for myself. I’m encouraged by this transition, and I look forward to a creative and prosperous 2012. And I wish you all the same.

Point Reyes had long been on the must-see list for Amber & me, but it was always just a little too far for an easy day trip, and not quite far enough to justify staying overnight.

In November we stopped hesitating and made the trip to the iconic lighthouse at the Point Reyes National Seashore. It was beautiful, sunny, windy. Here are a few snapshots from the trip.

I was visiting family in Maryland in late August, 2011 when Hurricane Irene started making her way on a path towards the east coast that predictions said could be one of the most destructive in recent history. The entire east coast was bracing for it — New York City ordered evacuations and shut down its mass transit system, flights and trains were canceled, hundreds of thousands of people fled the coast.

At the marina in Galesville, Maryland, where my parents lived on their sailboat, the approaching storm turned the sky a deep orange at sunset, adding a bit of drama and mystery to the hurried preparations that were underway.

I made my flight back to California, the storm’s path turned to a less-destructive offshore route, the marina was largely undamaged. But I’ve never before seen a sky look like this.

I was hired recently to do some band photography for San Jose rockers Town Crier. They’ve got a new self-produced EP coming out soon and needed some band portraits to go along with it. During an initial meeting over beers at our local pub Trials, we decided to go with a simple, dramatic one-light approach (having meetings that involve beer is one of the definite benefits of doing music photography). We also made time for some quick headshots and a scene in one of the band members’ personal bar.

This blog post is a look back at one of my favorite stories from my newspaper career. It happened in July, 2004.

The call came from the news editor on a routine Sunday afternoon : “There is a bull loose in North Salinas.”

The tone in Katherine’s voice indicated that she was certain about the situation that was unfolding. I headed north with the appropriate urgency, my police scanner filling in details.

When I arrived on the scene, I saw a large agricultural field, some emergency vehicles, a few pickup trucks, and a few hundred yards away, a lone person on a horse facing off with a very large bull.

Salinas is well known for its annual rodeo, a hundred-year-old tradition called California Rodeo Salinas. Less well known are the occasional small rodeos that are held at the Sheriff’s Posse Grounds. On this Sunday in July 2004, a bull managed to jump over a fence and head south, toward town.

When bulls are used in rodeos, a rope is tied around the animal’s flanks, applying pressure intended to persuade it to jump, buck and spin. The bull that was standing in the field in front of me still had a rope tied around it. It was pissed. I grabbed my cameras and ran down a farmhouse driveway, toward it.

Salinas is an agricultural town, literally an island in a valley of lettuce and other crops. Where the town ends, fields begin. The transition is abrupt. And it was in one of these adjoining fields that people from the rodeo had caught up to their fleeing bull. They were making a stand in front of a farmhouse in the middle of this field — they had a truck with a livestock trailer, several rodeo hands, and the young cowboy on the horse.

When I got close enough to take pictures, I watched as the following scene unfolded: The bull was encouraged to enter the livestock trailer, it declined, and decided instead to knock down and gore the cowboy, who was no longer on his horse.

After I shot these photos, the bull stopped, turned, and looked at me. I ran up a tree.

I did this not only because looking into the eyes of an angry bull is extremely frightening, but because I had seen many rodeo cowboys climb fences or whatever else was near them when trying to get out of the way of an angry bull. It worked, the bull turned and headed west toward another field.

By this time my coworker (and bandmate), reporter George Sanchez had arrived. We figured the only way to really follow the action was to be on the livestock trailer, so we asked the (very harried) driver if he’d mind if we hopped on. He told us not to fall and drove off after the bull.

As George and I clung to the back of a dirty livestock trailer on the trail of a angry bull that was only a few hundred yards away from rampaging through densely populated neighborhoods, we had a moment to pause, look at each other, and consider what we were doing. “This is awesome!” we said, grinning.

By the time the truck got to the stretch of road that separated the fields from a Home Depot parking lot, police had arrived, and they were armed. They had made it clear that their job was to prevent the bull from entering the parking lot, which was currently packed with a Sunday crowd hoping to get a look at the loose bull. The rodeo hands redoubled their efforts at finishing their job, knowing that if they failed, their valuable animal would be shot dead in the street.

The bull headed west until it encountered a major road. I watched as it turned and ran alongside a car for a few seconds, probably giving the driver reason to change his or her underwear. The rodeo hands managed to redirect it back toward the livestock trailer, where the following scenes unfolded:

By the time the bull broke free of the lasso around its horns and headed toward the Home Depot parking lot, I had moved into the bed of the truck for a better view. George had the good sense to get off the truck and behind the police. When the gunfire began, I was directly in line with the police (who were shooting) and the bull (who was absorbing a lot of bullets). As I was taking photos, it began to dawn on me that I was, as they say, in the line of fire.

“One in the truck! One in the truck!” I heard the Sergeant yell. I realized she was talking about me, jumped out of the back of the truck and ran down the road as quickly as I could, covering about three miles in just under two seconds. Not really, but I was scared enough to run faster than I had ever run while carrying cameras.

While the Salinas Police Department is a heavily armed force, it was a Sheriff’s deputy that eventually brought down the bull with his long gun. (I learned years later that this led to a joke within the police department: The Sheriff’s Office is the best at shooting the bull.)

Soon the bull was on its side, dead in the road. The rodeo organizers looked over their slain animal, the gored young cowboy was taken to the hospital and the crowd at Home Depot began to disperse. As one onlooker pulled out of the parking lot, he leaned out of his truck and said to a nearby cop: “You didn’t have to shoot it!”

Sure, buddy. You try catching a loose bull.

The story ended with a trip the next day to the hospital to visit the gored cowboy. Turns out he was a teenager who grew up on a ranch in Mexico and was used to lassoing animals from horseback. The bull’s horns got his arm when it knocked him down into the bushes, but he was recovering. Someone had given him get-well gift of a stuffed animal, which sat next to his hospital bed.

It was a bull.

During the month of September, I held a contest to gather more followers on social media. Everyone who was a fan of my Facebook pages or followed me on Twitter was entered.

Then I gathered up all the names and threw down the stairwell to reveal a winner.

Congratulations, Sandra. I pointed my camera at the pile and it saw your name first.

The contest is over, but you can still follow me on social media:
facebook.com/​scottmacdonaldphotography
facebook.com/​scottmacdonaldweddings
twitter.com/​scottmacphoto

I took my camera-on-a-stick to the fourth annual Luna Park Chalk Art Festival Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011, at Backesto Park in San Jose.

The “stick” in my camera-on-a-stick is a painter’s pole, and it can extend to nine feet. When I hold it up, that’s plenty of reach to look straight down on subjects, especially subjects who are sitting on a chalk-covered sidewalk.

Normally when I use the camera-on-a-stick setup, I get some funny looks. At the Chalk Art Festival, the funny looks quickly turned into nodding approval, as people seemed to instantly understand what I was up to.