My favorite color.

Green

Date: July 28, 2009
Place: Nob Hill, San Francisco
Modus operandi: Light and lively with the Panasonic G1
Weather: Typical overcast San Francisco day.
Time: 11:20am.
Gear: Panasonic G1, kit lens at 45mm, f/5.6, 1/80th, ISO100
Medium: Digital
Me: Just timing it right. Lucky, really.
My age: 57
Green, green and green.

It was nothing but a conditioned response that had me raise the camera to eye level and snap this picture.

Lonely.

Date: July 28, 2009
Place: Between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill, San Francisco
Modus operandi: Happy to be leaving the Tenderloin.
Weather: Typical overcast San Francisco day.
Time: 10:40am.
Gear: Panasonic G1, kit lens at 45mm, f/6.3, 1/80th, ISO100
Medium: Digital
Me: Thrilled to still have an eye for this sort of thing.
My age: 57

This reminds me of my picture of Perry’s taken at the very end of the last millennium. I had been tramping around the Tenderloin and was pretty much happy to be leaving the area. There’s really very little good that can be said about it.

Heading East, I saw this one from far away and was lucky that the lady remained as still as when I first saw her. Her deeply unhappy face speaks of a date broken, a heart crying.

There was a brief break in the traffic after what seemed like an age (in reality a couple of seconds!) and I managed to get the snap with that sweet kit lens on the G1 racked out as far as it could go – 90mm equivalent.

Just like using that old Leica 90mm but a lot faster and easier. No lens changing, no focusing, no light measurement needed. Words fail me in trying to convey just what a perfect camera/lens combination the G1 makes for street snaps like this. If this is your preferred genre, I strongly recommend the G1 and 14-45mm kit lens. It is all you will need and your ability to give near-100% attention to the subject will make you a better photographer.

In this case, I was fortunate to be able to balance the outward looking figure with the door on the right.

Taken not long after yesterday’s snap and a few blocks east. Seconds later the lady was gone. Sometimes you just get lucky.

Absent the usual sharpening using a Lightroom import preset no other processing was required – the naturally muted contrast of the G1 and my default underexposure setting makes for a low effort camera-to-final-image setup.

From Grace’s Steps.

Date: July 28, 2009
Place: California Street, San Francisco
Modus operandi: Just in time
Weather: 100% humidity but no rain
Time: 9:45 am
Gear: Panasonic G1, kit lens at 29mm
Medium: Digital
Me: Just exiting Grace Catedral
My age: 57

Grace Cathedral is one of those edifices erected by the self-important so that all can wonder at the greed which made their munificence possible. Atop Nob Hill in San Francisco, you exit it wondering what it is that you have just seen, with the word ‘big’ being about all you can articulate. Some of the truly tasteless murals testify to the bourgeois burghers who made it big and built it even bigger.

So I was sort of standing outside this Cathedral of Commerce on the south facing stairs, a tad lost in thought, only to be confronted by yet another memorial to purported goodness masquerading in the shape of an overbuilt granite monstrosity, the Freemasons’ temple across the road.

Glancing down I spotted these two – one just leaving the Tenderloin, not two blocks West, the other about to enter that worst of the city’s neighborhoods. And you thought people carried their life’s possessions on a stick slung over their shoulder only in children’s books?

The play of the figures against the backdrop was just perfect as I watched them fall into place. You don’t get two opportunities at this sort of thing and I grabbed mine no less greedily than the financiers all around me had grabbed their share of Nob Hill. Lady Luck arranged for the break in traffic and absence of vehicles on the road. Those with shutter lag need not apply!

Date: January, 2000
Place: Bay Meadows race track, San Francisco’s South Bay Area
Modus operandi: Troubled
Weather: Indoors
Time: 2pm
Gear: Leica M3, 50mm Summicron
Medium: Kodak Gold 100
Me: Ugh!

Imagine if you can a system which takes money from those least able to afford it and legalizes it. The concept behind the Coliseum cynically updated.

Because that is what California has accomplished though its legalized gambling. Some is state sponsored (our government seeks to exploit its citizens’ weaknesses to make hay), some privately owned like the Bay Meadows race track just south of San Francisco. And, of course, if you are an American Indian you can trade on the white man’s guilt and the sky is the limit, Indian tribes being the largest casino operators in the state. Hardly surprising – congressmen are cheap to buy.

Into the gambling hall at Bay Meadows and there they were, like so many academics, whiling their time and milk money away.

The glow from the objects of their attention – TV monitors with all the latest odds – adds to the opium den feel of the whole thing.