An oasis in the city.
No hard working street snapper can ply his trade in the absence of good sustenance, and The Butler & The Chef Bistro, south of Market at Third Street in San Francisco, provides the necessary goods.
G3, kit lens @ 14mm, 1/50, f/4, ISO1600. Click the picture for their website.
A shaft of sunlight.
At Third and Brannan Streets, San Francisco. G3, 1/400, f/4.9, ISO 1600.
In a large print the G3’s sensor confirms that it’s as good at ISO 1600 as the G1’s is at ISO 400, when it comes to a lack of noise.
A few prints later, and the gallery is done.
I wrote about an inexpensive way of displaying large prints in a professional manner here. After satisfying myself that this worked well and did not fall apart after a few sun cycles (a daily occurrence here in California, not known to residents of England and northern Europe ….), I got at it and ran off another nine 16/18″ x 24″ prints on the HP DesignJet (a company now permanently stuck on stupid). After mounting them all that was left to do was to wait on Documounts to deliver the required mats. Paper used is HP Premium Plus Glossy. Some speedy work with 3M Double Sided tape to fix the mats in place, a spirit level, measure and hammer, and 90 minutes and 36 mirror retainers later all was done.
All of these were taken in the last year in San Francisco, their recency based in the simple philosophy that if your latest pictures are not your best you should quit the hobby.
Cobbler’s display in North Beach. Mural at Capp and 16th Street.
Woman in the window in an alleyway in the Business District.
Mural behind the W hotel at 3rd and Howard. Rusted wall at Dogpatch. Comstock Saloon on Columbus Avenue in Little Italy.
Mural (lower) off 24th Street. Café Bastille on Belden Place in the Business District. Chairs on Maiden Lane and tram at the Ferry Building.
Hopefully all of these will have changed a year hence, or I’ll be doing needlework in my spare time and you can buy my photo gear. All snapped on the Panasonic G1 using the kit lens or the Olympus 9-18mm wide angle zoom.
Meanwhile, the thrill from walking up the stairs and recalling the exact circumstance of each picture is really quite something. Even in our modern LCD digital world, there’s nothing quite like a nicely displayed wall print.
Several of these snaps involve murals or wall art. If you are in San Francisco and want a good guide to the city’s many murals, click the picture below:
Click for the SF mural guide.
A worthy iPad photo magazine.
The cover of the inaugural issue. Click the picture,
The first issue of ‘Once’ for the iPad is available as a free download from the AppStore and it’s something I suggest you get. The magazine does everything right in contrast to the BJP which does just about everything wrong.
First, it downloads fast and loads quickly.
Second, content is limited to three photo essays, some with nicely integrated sound clips.
Third, navigation is excellent – intuitive, direct and simple. Everything about this says “Designed for a touch tablet”.
Display quality on the iPad is as good as it gets – just like looking at Kodachrome slides on a light box.
The magazine is a sort of modern LIFE, with traditional high quality photography accompanied by excellent writing. True photojournalism. There are no advertisements and no equipment reviews. The focus is on the pictures and the story.
The first issue has articles on the dispossesed people living in the no man’s land between Russia and Georgia in the aftermath of the hostilities there; on the last suvivors of an ancient lifestyle in Greenland – this piece is quite special; and on a retirement community in Arizona. Typically these include a 5 page essay and 20 photographs. Unlike with the BJP, there is no bloat so there are no attention span issues, nor is there any frustration in finding things.
Recommended. Let’s hope it’s published more than its title suggests.
Update August 24, 2012:
Sadly, as the following email indicates, Once has folded after just 11 months:
Seems it’s pretty much impossible to make money at these things.
Amid the bustle.
While my snaps of cities are invariably taken during the hustle and bustle of a busy day, I tend to seek out silence and maybe a lone figure, to better show the beauty of a scene. Here are two examples. The first is near Mission Street:
In the spirit of Ambrose Bierce a friend writes:
“I can almost smell that big city, late afternoon, breezy smell, with that old immense highrise feel shrinking you down to size. Shadows and dazzling edifices reaching for the sky…..and, at the bottom, a boutique dress shop and the Wing Yap Noodle Factory.”
Ambrose Bierce Street, SF, named after the American satirist. Also known as Aldrich Street.
Looking south toward Annie Street. G3, kit lens @17mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 320.
The second is on lovely Leidesdorff Street in the Business District:
G3, kit lens @ 42mm, 1/400, f/5.6, ISO 320.
The G3’s sensor does a lovely job here, rendering an especially full, creamy tonal range.