Watch you lookin’ at?

G1, kit lens, ISO 320.

In San Francisco.

End of Empire.

G1, kit kens @30mm, 1/640, f/13, ISO 320

It’s not that I search out obesity in my street snaps.

It’s that it is simply impossible to avoid it.

America’s gluttony is not restricted to oil. It also shows a serious addiction to fat and sugar.

I wouldn’t mind so much – hey, it’s your body and your premature death only helps the gene pool – but for the fact that fat ugly cows like the one above penalize me for my healthy life choices.

Every time I deny myself that extra sugared drink or hamburger, this lump of lard eats it for me. She uses more gas to eat it, more gas to have it delivered, more gas to move her enormous behind, and sure as hell, my health insurance premiums subsidize her miserable life replete with coronaries and diabetes. And you can bet she smokes, too.

I can only cry for the poor baby in the picture. What possible chance can it have in the Land of the Fat?

Snapped on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco where most of the revolting food on sale is deep fried.

This cow’s sister is here.

Woof!

Having tried to adopt an ongoing keywording process in my Lightroom library, I searched on ‘Dogs’ the other day and was amazed to find I had hundreds of street snaps featuring my favorite animal.

To see some of my favorites, click the picture. These were snapped in London, Paris, Carmel and San Francisco.

Click the picture.

One of my favorite dog photographers is Elliott Erwitt; heck, he’s one of my favorite photographers, period. He has published many books of dog pictures, the one in my library being titled ‘To the dogs’ but there are many others, several in print, at Amazon. His impish, gentle humor can only come from someone who loves his subjects and his work is highly recommended. You will laugh, but in sympathy, never in ridicule.

To see my library of photo books go to the bottom of the page.

Morning light.

Our nine year old son had just finished a dry run for his piano recital (his right hand needs work, testimony to his left-handedness and generally artistic disposition, thank goodness) and wanted a treat. He had earned it. 25th Avenue in San Mateo, CA is not exactly a stronghold of fine restaurants but it very definitely is a neighborhood, so it was to a local greasy spoon we repaired for his reward.

As he luxuriated in pancakes drowned in maple syrup, washed down with milk, happy as can be, I contemplated the tired, chipped formica countertop (real men sit at the counter) and enjoyed the boisterous exchange of greetings between two of the locals, replete with much back- and hand-slapping. The environment was reminiscent of that restaurant scene from Pulp Fiction except that Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta were not in the corner, heavily armed, and the place was not about to be held up by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer. No, what drew my attention was Eleanor Rigby in the corner.

Beautiful lyrics by Paul McCartney.

W. B. Yeats may have said it better, but he didn’t write music:

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes once had, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a cloud of stars.

Snapped over my son’s shoulder on the Panny G1 with the kit lens.