E-mail: leicaman713@cs.com
Jim Vestal is a retired photojournalist with more than 40-years newspaper experience. He retired from the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA) in 1996, after working 5-years for New York Newsday and 21-years at The Sacramento (CA) Union as the Picture Editor. Prior to those positions he was a news photographer for The Redding (CA) Record-Searchlight and the San Luis Obispo (CA) Telegram-Tribune, where he was the National Press Photographers Assoc. Photographer of the Year for Region Ten in 1966 and 1967.
He was the first Military Photographer of the Year as awarded by the University of Missouri, Enclyclopedia Britannica, and the Pentagon, for his work as a photographer in Korea for Pacific The Stars & Stripes military newspaper during 1960-1961.
By 1967 Jim was at the Lyndon Johnson White House with Lady Bird to celebrate an OEO movie titled "Pancho" that was based on and used his photos from The Telegram-Tribune on the then new Head Start program when it first got underway in 1965 and 1966.
He started in photography with his brother Sam, a news photographer for Watsonville (CA), Register-Pajaronian for over 30 years. The R-P was a 1956 Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper. Sam passed on July 8, 2002. He was a Stars & Stripes photographer in Germany 1952-53.
Jim and his wife Ann, a graphic artist, and ceramicist live in the East Bay from San Francisco. Jim retired (again) after 5 years teaching photography and photojournalism at California State University, Hayward. The two stay active in their professions at home, but prefer to summer and ski the Lake Tahoe resorts, visit Paris, NYC, the Cheyenne rodeo, and Turkey the past six years.
You are viewing a playful but also serious website that is a professional look,
as well as playful view of a "living scrapbook" from the Vestal Brothers using images from the late Sam Vestal, and on a daily basis - new additions by Jim Vestal.
Gargoyle watch in Paris
Jim's Leica Story
Jim's Leica Story
Updated Dec. 23, 2011 - All Images ©2011 Jim W. Vestal
Click soon for Henry's
past 11 years to today.
New August. 2010
Taos & Santa Fe
A 256 page 13"x 11"
book (6), 320+ photos
View or order any
book at www.blurb.com -
or just click on them.
And a Happy New Year 2012
