Claes Oldenburg

Photographs

Getting tired.

I recall the first time I saw one of Claes Oldenburg’s public sculptures. Union Square, NYC, 1981. It was a toothbrush some seven stories tall. Or maybe it was a corn-on-the-cob. I forget. After a while these giant daily objects all meld into one. Rarely has the old dictum “When you have seen one you have seen them all” been more true.

The best that can be said for these huge ‘sculptures’ – a denigration of the noun – is that they can provide opportunities for amusing pictures but if my apartment faced one I would likely turn to a life of crime, procure some high explosive and rig the thing in the middle of the night.

Sometimes they are placed well away from homes, like the Cupid Bow and Arrow on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. It’s mildly amusing in a gauche sort of way, sufficiently isolated to prevent it from becoming an eyesore and, after a while, I imagine one walks past it without noticing. Wit, whimsy and lightness are strangers to the Oldenburg school of public works.

Cupid’s Bow and the Oakland Bay Bridge, Embarcadero, SF. G1, kit lens @ 14mm, 1/4000, f/6.3, ISO320.

Oldenburg’s works are now to be found in every big American city, the municipal planners proving yet again that one of the key dictates of government employment is a total lack of original thinking and a wild disregard for the wise use of taxpayers’ money.

But the other day I did come across a neat piece which had everything Oldenburg’s lugubrious works lack. Humor, lightness and smart placement. And not a taxpayer cent involved. This pair of martini olives shaped into a heart with a swizzle stick denoting Cupid’s arrow, can be found in the forecourt of a restaurant not a thousand yards south of Oldenburg’s charmless bow and arrow. And it really works well.

Martini olive heart. G1, kit zoom @ 23mm, 1/1250, f/4.7, ISO320.

MoMo’s restaurant is located at Second and Townsend Streets in San Francisco and I wouldn’t go there to order girlie drinks, if I were you.

Green

Photographs

A sort of theme.

It’s not that I go out with specific themes in mind, but doing the chore of keywording in my LR3 library the other day I was struck by how often monochromatic green subjects feature in my snaps. So it was a matter of moments to make these into a Smart Collection, sorting on the keyword ‘Green’ and a few seconds later I had a handful worthy of publication. Here they are:

Greenwich Village, NYC, 1983. Leica M3.

Ojai, CA, 1991. Leica M3.

Morro Bay, 2005. Mamiya 6.

Laguna Seca, 2005. Canon 5D.

Paso Robles, CA, 2004. Canon 5D.

Filoli, CA, 2006. Canon 300D.

Half Moon Bay, CA, 2009. Panasonic G1.

Mission District, San Francisco, 2010. Panasonic G1.

Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 2010. Panasonic G1.

Mission District, San Francisco, 2011. Panasonic G1.

I guess you could say green is my favorite color!

Moderne

Architecture

A last flowering of beauty.

Before America embarked on yet another of its unending wars in support of the military industrial complex (though in fairness to the Land of the Free, while this may have been the last hot war they won the cause was not oil but freedom) the movement known as Art Deco came to its final fruition in the variant most often referred to as Moderne.

Any fan of late ’30s movies, especially musicals, will get an eyeful of Art Deco with its sensual curves and light touch. Moderne took this to a new high, incorporating nautical themes and yet cleaner lines. Few buildings illustrate the style better than the Portside building on the Embarcadero in east San Francisco.

The Portside Building at 38 Bryant Street, San Francisco. G1, kit lens @ 31mm 1/4000, f/5,4, ISO 320.

Portside overlooks the east bay and sees morning fog as often as not. For reasons which quite defeat me it is placed immediately under the Oakland Bay Bridge, and while the latter discloses far less of the Art Deco beauty abundantly on show in the Golden Gate on the other side of town, the period is the same. Portside was actually completed in the 1990s and is a recreation of the original Moderne style, seldom seen in San Francisco. Nothing wrong with recreation – you can bet the windows fit, there is modern air conditioning and the interior is silent as the grave according to HKS, the architects responsible. Still, I’m not sure I would want to blow a seven figure sum on a condo here knowing that the bridge above awaits temptation in the guise of the next major earthquake. ‘Penthouse, open sky view’ rather loses its appeal.

Penthouse view of the Oakland Bay Bridge. G1, kit lens @ 16mm, 1/320, f/7.1, ISO 320.

On Two Wheels

Photographs

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.

Two bargains from Panasonic

Micro Four-Thirds

Cheap lenses.

Aficionados of the MFT camera range from Panny (G1/G2/G10/GH1/GH2/GF1) can hardly complain about the prices of two of the most useful lens options – prices are from B&H in the US but doubtless can be matched elsewhere:

I have no special need for the first as the 14-45mm kit lens does it for me, and I wouldn’t use the fast aperture of this neat pancake lens, but I simply love the 45-200mm zoom for its OIS, low weight, small size and great performance.

I forget the prices of these when they were first announced, but suspect the above are much less.

The beauty of the promise of the MFT format is that it seems to me that the sensors will only get better, so these lenses will deliver better results from the next generation of bodies than they already do from the ones currently available.