A new eBook.

If you are going to ride on two wheels there are some cities you definitely want to avoid. London, for one, where it’s always raining. Rome, where it never rains but every car driver is a homicidal lunatic. And Amsterdam where you will, likely as not, be run over by another bicyclist.

But bring your bike to San Francisco and, so long as you avoid the hills and the attendant coronary, your chances of having a good time are pretty solid, for this is one of the friendliest cities for two wheel transportation in the universe.

You see them everywhere, in every size and shape. They live in the city or pour in daily on the BART or the Caltrain. They park just about anywhere they like, free, and if you want to ride your bike on the sidewalk, have at it. The cops are too busy with their donuts and coffee to care.

The author on the BikeCam, with the Panny G1 in San Francisco.

To download the eBook just click the picture. The file is under 4mB in size and is optimized for the iPad; load it from one and you will have the option of opening it in the Books app. It also shows fine on laptops, and well on all but the largest desktop screens. The image sizes have been constrained to limit file size and to keep download times short.

All snaps taken in San Francisco during January, 2011.

To see how this eBook was made, click here.

Sometimes black and white works.

I was much taken with this peculiar security door in the Mission District of San Francisco, but the color original was surpassingly bland. More punch was called for.

Original snap.

Long time readers of this blog will know that, despite growing up with TriX film, I generally consider contemporary use of black and white so much of an excuse for trying to make a lousy picture half decent. Sometimes, however, a subject really does scream ‘monochrome’ at you, and this is one of those times. (Mantra? “Black and white sucks, except when it doesn’t”)

After a quick round trip to Photoshop to correct leaning verticals, (read the Comments below to see why PS is superior to LR for perspective correction) I clicked on the B&W panel in LR3 then proceeded to mess with the Tone Curve and associated sliders. By clicking the triangle at top right of the histogram (circled), I could work the ‘Highlights’ slider to the point where clipping just occurs (see the arrowed red line in the snap), thus preserving highlight details.

The tone curve has been modified into an ‘S’ shape from the linear original, thus heightening contrast while preserving shadow details.

And here is the finished result after applying a touch of post-crop vignetting to heighten the focus on the main subject:

Security door, Mission District, San Francisco. Panasonic G1, 14-45mm kit lens at 17mm, 1/125, f/10, ISO320.

On rare occasions black and white does work, though in this case I confess I was thinking in color, as I usually do, when pressing the button.

It rarely ‘just happens’.

There’s a cadre of photographers out there which maintains that cell phone cameras are the ideal. The simple reason is that you always have your camera with you. Sure, the quality may not be the greatest, the controls limited or non-existent, the ergonomics could hardly be worse, but it beats the whopper DSLR and batch of lenses you leave at home because the whole thing is just too much to carry. Pro photographer Chase Jarvis is an advocate of cell phone cameras, and you can see some of his original iPhone work here.

Because I no longer have to wear a uniform, a.k.a. a suit, I find that my Panasonic G1 usually goes with me as often as not. Not as small as a cell phone, sure, but infinitely more capable and light and unobtrusive enough that it’s no chore to carry.

So next time you hear ‘lucky shot’, discount it. Chances are that the photographer didn’t so much get lucky but rather that he put himself in a position to capitalize on luck, and the only way to do that is to have a camera with you.

Here are some recent street snaps where I just ‘got lucky’.

Mini. Seventh Street.

Colored window frames. Sumner Street.

Albers Flour mural, Victoria Theater, Capp and 16th Street.

Sun. Caltrain Terminus, Fourth and Townsend Street.

White and black. Cable Car turntable, Market Street.

MOMA

Clarion Alley, Mission District.

“La Danse”, Clarion Alley, Mission District.

Eyeball, Market Street.

Fourth Street.

All snapped in San Francisco using the Panasonic G1 with the kit zoom, except for the one on Sumner Street where I used the 45-200mm Panny MFT zoom.

For those not familiar with the wonderful murals to be found throughout the Mission District in San Francisco, and most especially those on Clarion Alley, the story is writ large by the artists in the mural at the south-west end of the alley. The Mission District isn’t exactly Beverly Hills, but the art is well worth a visit. Just be sure to keep a low profile and avoid breathing what passes for air here.

Too bad about the graffiti. Who could disagree with the exhortation “Tag on a Bank, please. Don’t diss art.”