May 13 – Everyone has a magic moment now and then and mine took place with A snap over lunch<\/a> at a Mission District brew pub.<\/p>\n May 22 – I don’t much reminisce about my film days, but trust me, you will love Paris, 1974<\/a> because it’s all about the most beautiful city in the world.<\/p>\n May 28 – An earnest walk along Mission Street<\/a> saw me doing a number on Papa Hemingway.<\/p>\n May 31 – A visit to Hayes Valley<\/a> saw one of those serendipitous discoveries of a little known and utterly charming area of the City by the Bay.<\/p>\n June 2 – Filoli<\/a> is a wonder, not least for the fact that I like to drive there on a summer’s day and imagine that, yes, I really am Blake Carrington of Dynasty fame. I even figured out what it would take to buy and privatize the place.<\/p>\n June 10 – Bernal Heights on the west side of San Francisco was an incredible discovery, and I started writing about it here<\/a>, with a piece on the four legged world following<\/a>. Given my love of dogs this was probably the most fun I had taking pictures in 2012.<\/p>\n Photographers:<\/b><\/p>\n May 17 – Paul Bock<\/a> shared some of his lovely work with me and my readers.<\/p>\n July 5 – English photographer Martin Parr<\/a> did a number on the people, ‘culture’ and food of the deep south and it’s hard to blame him, as I spent a miserable year of my life in North Carolina surrounded by people who had married their cousins. There’s every reason to believe things get even worse the further south you go.<\/p>\n August 20 – The 120th anniversary of Vogue<\/a> brought with it some splendid photography.<\/p>\n August 28 – The man who took the most famous photograph<\/a> in human history passed away.<\/p>\n Photography:<\/b><\/p>\n June 23 – Ever focused on being better\/faster\/cooler than the MacPro, my computer builder FU Steve made sure that The HP100 goes ballistic<\/a> was, indeed, a reality for my Hackintosh.<\/p>\n June 14 – Walter Mandler was a god, and I really got into it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n June 24 – I love musicals and what better place than to start than at the top with Lenny<\/a>?<\/p>\n July 10 – after the usual installation hassles, I was able to confirm that Photoshop CS5 (and Lightroom 4) run at more than adequate speed<\/a> on the 2012 MacBook Air<\/a>, making for an excellent portable rig. The 2012 MBA delivers a great increase in speed over my previous 2010 model.<\/p>\n July 20 – a focus on essential hardware<\/a> in the event of an all consuming fire saw me choosing the 50mm f\/1.4 Nikkor-S as the lens to take with me.<\/p>\n July 29 – my infinitely upgradable Hackintosh saw the installation of Mountain Lion<\/a>. Apple’s OS upgrades have never been cheaper – ML cost $20 – or less worthwhile, each conferring additional unnecessary frou frou<\/i>, Mercifully, the OS remains robust and stable.<\/p>\n August 5 – America excelled again, placing a camera on Mars<\/a>. It’s fashionable to write America off and tell everyone in earshot that the future is in China or some other hole passing for existence in the Far East. Utter rot. Last I checked MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Princeton and Penn were all in America. All are richly endowed, and the whole world continues to try to gain entry to these, the finest schools on earth.<\/p>\n August 13 – The exercise in serial boredom and commercial excess which is the Olympic Games was relieved by a splendidly humorous piece that only the British can do. It saw HM The Queen<\/a> parachuting into the Olympic Stadium, after slipping the watchful eye of her bodyguard, none other than 007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Looking back. Continuing from part I. Photographs: May 1 – I’m no fan of monochrome, largely regarding it as a cop out for poor vision, but I get into the reminiscence thing in Once upon a time …. May 13 – Everyone has a magic moment now and then and mine took place with A … Continue reading Columns of the year 2012 – Part 2 of 3<\/span> ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/Bruce.jpg\")
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