Category Archives: Photographs

Ecco Ristorante

Dining, Photographs

Superb!

Ecco Ristorante in Burlingame has been around since 1986 with the same chef and owner, Tooraj Sharif, a charming man and a great cook. The food is distinguished by subtle flavors and sauces, always beautifully served.

It’s an occasion place, and you mostly see besuited gents eating here, spending someone else’s money.


Click the image for Ecco’s site.

We always ask for our favorite waiter Paul, not just because he is a warm, effusive individual, but also because he runs a racing motorcycle accessories business and always fills us in on the latest dirt!

The other night saw my boy Winston and I celebrating his splendid boarding school entrance exam score and Paul took an absolutely lovely snap of us, which I felt I had to share:

Snapped on my iPhone6.

A few from 2015

Photographs

To Stravinsky’s Petrushka.


Refresh your browser if there’s nothing there.

I note that half a dozen of these were snapped on the iPhone 6 and only expect that the percentage will rise. The camera in that tool is outstanding and will only get better.

2015 saw absolutely no changes in my hardware. I remain deeply enamored of the Panasonic GX7 which remains the best street snapper I have used. The digital Leica M2.

What is surprising is how often I have been – ahem! – ‘borrowing’ my son’s Panny LX100 for its all-in-one utility. The fixed Leica zoom on that body may not be up to the definition of the GX7’s lenses but 24-75mm is perfect for this dabbler.

And the sheer utility and light weight of these cameras – cell phone or not – perversely reminds me how much pure tactile joy is to be had from the big Nikons, the D2X and D3X, which I rolled out in the last week of the year. The handling of small bodies cannot compare. Guilt made me dust them off and pop a couple of those gorgeous old MF Nikkors in the shoulder bag en route to the City by the Bay for some year end R&R. Sore neck and shoulders apart, what better end could there be to a fantastic year?

You can read about Stravinsky’s Petrushka ballet, in all its quirky joy, here. If you would like more of the same in a 19th Century idiom, try Debussy’s ‘Children’s Corner Suite’.

Flagmakers

Photographers, Photographs

Coming back soon.

The Flagmakers mural between Howard and Natoma Streets in San Francisco has been lost to sight as MOMA has undergone an extensive rebuild. The museum will finally open in May 2016 and let’s hope they make far better use of the internal volume than before where most of the display space was simply wasted, making for too few exhibitions.

When scaffolding went up all around I rather feared that Flagmakers would be lost to the world and my extensive collection of mural images – so many of them ephemeral and now gone – shows I photographed it in 2011 and 2012.

Here’s the 2012 version:


February 18, 2012. Nikon D700, 85mm f/1.8 AF-D Nikkor.

MOMA has an interesting story about photographer Janet Delaney who snapped the same scene in 1982 – seemingly as faded then as now.


Click the image for the story.

Click the image for the story. The good news is that the mural has been saved, if rather crowded out by the building additions.

Comparing the two, not that much has actually changed in the mural building. The fire escape ladder appears to have grown a counterweight to the right, the delicate iron balcony appears unmolested, the top of the fire escape now has handrails added and the sign was as faded then as now – I did add a little saturation here and there to the surpassingly bland original. The garage in the foreground is long gone, unlike Chevron, which should be around another century or so as we reluctantly migrate to renewable resources.

I’m reminded also of how much I miss the Nikon D700 body – no video nonsense, a modest sized sensor with superior low light capabilities and exceptional responsiveness. A photographer’s machine. No one needs more than 12mp in an FF sensor.

Another version of Flagmakers, no longer possible, appears here.