In North Beach.
Jasper Place, one of the many charming alleyways in North Beach, SF.
The high dynamic range is easily corrected using the superb Highlights and Shadows sliders in Lightroom 4. Abobe did a tremendous engineering job here.
Whenever I traipse along these alleyways Utrillo’s paintings dance in my head:
Panny GX7, 17mm Zuiko.
Hope dissolved.
Degas had a good crack at it in 1876. As the most photographic of painters, he showed life without hope, the pair deep in their cups, drinking ill distilled absinthe en route to blindness and death. And then there’s that wide-angle vision of his, with the signed knife in the foreground.
Until this time just about every painter saw though a 50mm lens, with the possible exception of the incomparable Paolo Uccello (1397 – 1475, quite an innings) whose Battle of San Romano was very much seen through a 21mm. Fortunate Europeans can see this work in the National Gallery, the Uffizi or the Louvre, but without a shadow of a doubt the one in London is a standout, one of the true materpieces of Western art. High time someone in America bought it …. a rounding error for a tech IPO windfall. I so miss standing close to the canvas completely subsumed by the action. After all, it would be a challenge to sanity to return to rain and Ivan saturated London.
I had a go at the same theme recently, at the oldest drinking spot in South Beach, SF, The Saloon, a survivor of the 1906 earthquake and fire. The default beer here, Pabst Blue Ribbon, is arguably worse than badly distilled absinthe. I asked the barman for permission to take pictures yet this image was completely unposed. ‘L’Absinthe’ flashed through my mind as I pressed the button. Degas pioneered the technique of cutting people off at the edge of the frame, one devolved from his photography. I just copied that. This is from the full frame, no cropping.
Nikon D3x, 35mm f/1.4 Nikkor G at f/2 (a loaner, before I finally got a 35/1.4 Sigma which actually focused properly. Decent lens, the Nikkor, focuses well, but no Siggy when it comes to resolution wide open). That said, the 18″ x 24″ print of this little drama on my wall is simply a showstopper, with especially lovely rendering of color. You will not go wrong with the 35mm f/1.4 Nikkor G, though it costs an arm and a leg.
Swedish Impressionist.
The show is on for another month. Zorn had business sense denied the Impressionists, and had a way of handling water which is out of this world.
Recommended.
An exceptional show.
The David Hockney show at the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park is exceptional in every way and a must see for any photographer. Only works by this prolific artist since 2002 are shown in what is the largest exhibition the de Young has ever mounted. Hockney makes use of modern and traditional technologies in inspiring ways and the New York Times’s critic was bang on in describing him as ‘… one of the greatest colorists since Matisse’, though it has to be added that Raoul Dufy is a kindred spirit.
Among the many compelling images on display here are video displays showing Hockney’s iPad compositions in time lapse – quite riveting as you literally see the creation of the work (the artist explains that he discovered that the Brushes app actually records each image creation session) – as well as the huge wall displays of eighteen or more large LCDs showing the beauty of the Yorkshire countryside whence Hockney hails. The last eight years he spent there (he lives in Los Angeles) were exceptionally productive and one room, whose four walls show giant multi-panel paintings of a country lane in each of the four seasons, is perhaps the finest thing in the show. The images are, without exception, joyful and Hockney’s love for his native Yorkshire shines through.
There are also many portraits of his friends done in that somewhat flat and naïve style which maybe could be represented in less volume, but are charming for what they are.
Another room contains no fewer than twenty-four large LCD panels with motion images of jugglers doing their thing. It’s a lot of fun and reminds us that Hockney never gets pretentious about his art or takes it too seriously. He’s too well grounded in his Yorkshire roots to permit that sort of silliness.
One large room is dedicated to the ‘Great Wall’, containing Hockney’s clippings of great paintings since 1400 and showing how the use of the camera obscura from around 1420, where painters traced a projected image of the scene in a darkened room, started to affect ways of seeing. The camera may not have been invented for another four centuries but the room shows compellingly how seeing changed with the introduction of technology.
Highly recommended.
All images except the second on the Panasonic GX7 at ISO 3200.
A lovely environment.
If you want to get into any of the three Stacks restaurants – in SF’s Hayes Valley, in Palo Alto or my local, in Burlingame – get there as soon after 7:30am opening as possible. Much later and there is certain to be a long line outside and there’s a good reason for that.
The service is world-class and the environment is reminiscent of nothing so much as a Tissot, although dress standards are not what they were in Victorian times:
And while you can probably get similar food at the local greasy spoon for less, you will not get the atmosphere to be enjoyed here, at Stacks you will not be forced to converse with horny handed sons of toil at the bar. My son did serious damage to a couple of pancakes and I destroyed the all meat omelette. The pot of coffee provided, and left on our table, would have fueled a whole Arctic expedition. With tip our meal came to $30.