Ushering in the new year.

San Mateo, CA. G3, kit lens @18mm.

San Francisco.

By turn strange, surreal, eccentric, colorful, monochromatic and never predictable. San Francisco is all of these, and this is how I saw it over the past twelve months. Unlike my Street Snaps where people are the object of interest, in my Cityscapes people, if they are even present, are part of the broader cityscape.

Click the picture for the slide show.

Mostly snapped on the Panasonic G1 with the kit lens, with the last few on the G3. The little Pannys don’t look like much and I can only express my deep gratitude to the maker for that. Electrician’s tape, used to obscure brand names on the hardware, is a useful adjunct. While one was taken with the 45-200mm Panny zoom, the 14-45mm kit lens really is perfect for this sort of thing and it’s all I carry most of the time. Were it non-interchangeable I would not mind one bit. The G3 adds two stops of grain reduction compared to the G1, so in a pinch I’ll enlarge what I need a bit more without compromising quality too much, and avoid having to carry an extra lens, small as it may be.

A charming display.

Spotted in downtown Carmel, CA.

G3, Olympus 9-18mm @ 18mm, 1/320, f/5.6, ISO1600.

In the land of high-end retail everything sells.

You can see just how diminutive the G3 is in the reflection. Any smaller and it would be hard to hold.

Rather than risking reflections from the camera’s flash, I processed the snap in Photoshop, outlining the birds with the Magic Lasso and bringing them up a tad using the Curves tool.

The year’s favorites.

Click the picture to view.

These are my favorites from the many street snaps I took in 2011.

All made in San Francisco on the Panny G1 and G3, mostly with the kit zoom except for one, the girl with the bike, which was taken on the estimable iPhone 4S.

Enjoy.

Flowers.

I don’t do flowers, not if I can help it. It’s a genre where it’s almost impossible to say anything new.

Yet one of the key attractions of the coastal town of Carmel, CA is the abundance of flowers on display throughout the year. Be it in stores, restaurants or well tended gardens, they are everywhere.

These caught my eye on a stroll through downtown the other day:

Carmel, CA. G3, Olympus 9-18mm @ 12mm, 1/200, f/5.6, ISO320.

The wide zoom Olympus MFT 9-18mm lens is ideal for this sort of thing, and makes a fine walk-about companion for the 14-45mm kit zoom.