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.”

Sometimes you just have to run ….

I was traipsing around the most glorious city on the left coast yesterday enjoying weather designed by Hollywood and I got to thinking. (Pardon the awful English, I’ve been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies recently). Some days it’s perfectly clear you simply cannot take a good street photograph. Yes, you still have to go out, serve your time, bang away, fail miserably, knowing it’s the penance required for days like yesterday. I have lots of days of penance. So the city owed me one. And boy, did it ever deliver.

Don’t ask me how days like this happen. All I know is that when they do you grab the opportunity with both hands, ask no questions and push the button. You cannot predict it, you cannot analyze it and it’s beyond human comprehension. It’s just how it is.

So here, without further ado, are some of yesterday’s snaps with a few words thrown in about how it all happened.

Head man.

Piece of cake this one. I saw the guy at 100 yards and just waited. I had my patented Invisibility Cloak on so he could not see me. Impossible to miss something like this and what was he going to do? Drop his load?

Silent critic.

The only thing to do here was not to laugh. I tried half a dozen variants as the cell phone guy paced this way and that, oblivious to the world. All it took was for his critic to be placed just so. Funny thing about people on their cell phones. They become blind.

Big one.

I spotted this across Mission Street. As I crossed, trying not to be taken out by crazy cyclists convinced of their primacy on the road, I squeezed off a couple from a distance just in case. As I got closer and closer the subject remained stationary – maybe nor surprisingly – until I got the framing just so for the last in the series, the brick wall providing a nice counterbalance to her heft. It’s known as ‘sneaker zoom’. You keep walking until the subject fills the view. And where exactly do you get Levis in that size?

Pecker.

Pure serendipity, this one. I liked the composition and approached, hoping something might happen. Suddenly the bird landed and the guy on the right dipped his head. Click. No second chance here.

Kick ass.

This was nothing more than a knee jerk (!) reaction. The lady had raised her leg to support her purse, searching for quarters, and the man was trying to figure out the arcana of modern San Francisco parking meters. Just raise the camera and bang. No chance for composition. No time. I lucked out. It was that kind of day.

Hat, gloves and socks.

This very dignified gent was reliving the Old World, enjoying yesterday’s technology, aka a book, and all I tried to do was preserve his dignity and calm in the gorgeous light. Not hard when your subject is engrossed. He’s got that white thing down – hat, gloves, socks.

Superman.

But sometimes, you simply have to run. San Francisco is blessed with several generations of public transit – cable cars, streetcars, trolley buses and the Muni light rail system. I had to dodge the last three as I ran hell for leather across Steuart Street, for I had spotted Superman all of 100 yards away, the lights were changing and he was heading for his car. Narrowly saving the taxpayers of the City by the Bay a multi-million dollar lawsuit as I avoided an oncoming streetcar, I beat the world and Olympic records for the 100 yard dash to get close enough. The Man of Steel gave me one backward glance before getting in the car and that’s all I needed.

Sometimes you just have to run ….

All snaps on the Panasonic G1 with the 14-45mm kit lens set at 18mm and auto-everything at ISO320.