the eyes and ears

So I drive down for what I believe is my last appointment for my eyes in San Jose. It's been months since my last checkup and my eyes feel like it's always been without glasses, though I know it's been the other way around.

It's incredible to think that sight is such a gift that we all take so much for granted. As a photographer, I see things in a different light and if I were to ever lose my vision, I'd be more than up a creek!!

In the months it's been since I've had my "new" eyes, I've been blinded while shooting the sunsets, I've been jabbed in the eyes plus I've poked myself in the eyes several times and also jabbed my eyes with my camera straps. It wasn't easy to do and to do it several times wasn't easy ~ actually very painful! I've seen a lot and even as I write this, my vision improve each and every day and I can SEE the differences.....

When I make the hour drive from SF to San Jose for these eye appointments I try to make it a day-trip to shoot things and places; this won't be any exception..... will post results of the appointment plus any fotos later....

The other day attended for the first time the Stupid Parade which started near the Ferry Building. It's my first time as I've been away from the City for so many years. So many events, so much uniqueness and so little time. sigh..... I had the chance to meet with a fellow-blogger and flickrite who is from the Costa del Sol, plus yesterday I met with a fellow Yelper and flickrite bubbletea1 who BARTed over from Fremont and we met at the Museum of Craft + Design, then walked over to Polk Street and Washington to see a Yelp-friendly art gallery. I got back to my car parked near the museum just in time before it was towed!!

UPDATE: Well, it was harrowing drive to San Jose - leaving at a later hour but stopping at the Daly City cemetery to see family, I lost track of where all of my family were as they had cut the grass and one tomb marker was completely covered by the grass!! It took me a few minutes to find it - I haven't been there often as I lived out of the country for decades - and now have the location etched permanently into my brain! It's disgusting to see that so many tombs have no flowers which means that they are forgotten... so sad. Will I too be forgotten and just a piece of blowing grass or trash when I am gone?

Because of that search and the outbound traffic, I had only 20mins to drive from Daly City to San Jose!! I couldn't believe it but I arrived and walked in on time! Usually I select an appointment time much earlier but as it was my last I decided on a later hour - big mistake! So my eyes are improving as can be expected. I should be using eye drops but I haven't - too busy - but I do try to remember to use the drops at night to see better. Within a half hour, I was out of there and enroute other locations. The day ended with a grand sunset from Immigrant Point at the Presidio....

Did you see it?

On a more somber note, while I was eating at a downtown restaurant the other day, I sat at a booth with a few people behind me. Of course, it's the typical situation where I could everything said.... and at one point, these tourists I overheard "have you seen all of the homeless on the streets here?" then laughed loudly. It bothered me... and for the next few minutes words floated and bounced through my head. I determined that when I left, I would turn to them and tell them that homelessness is a WORLD problem and it could be them next week or month, and would people point at you and laugh? I tossed the words inside my head, but when I left, I didn't turn to them, nor did I say a word....

I knew they would not care, I knew they would not understand, and I knew I would be looked upon as the stupid one to bring up my thoughts that interfere with their private conversations.....

sigh....

the Valley of Glass

It's not too often I get a chance to walk in the City any longer. When I lived in Spain I used to walk about seven miles in less than a week and now, I don't even make five miles in a month let alone two. I used to walk every week when I first arrived, but that's before I started madly snapping everything in sight of my great gorgeous hometown, and now I have thousands of image files. It seems the only walking I get to do now is when I grab that old magic-box and go somewhere to take pictures! More often than not, at some stage of taking pictures, I will run - for a position, to get a camera, to use the tripod, etc... you get the picture.

I now practically spend all day on the computer, organizing my files - an endless project as each week I create newer files to add to the pile. Right now I've been spending the past few days moving all of my older 2008 image files to an external hard drive, archiving the old while making room for the newer 2009 files yet to be created. There's a lot of files to organize and archive, 190gigs at last count and growing as I find lost files hidden in some obscure folder as I ran out of room on my 160gig internal hard drive on the desktop. What I am doing now and the constant changes to improve my filing and down- and up-loading influences how I now download to the desktop and later archive.... I've been filing my imagery as negatives and now digital files for over 30 years, and along with a folder under every theme and subject matter to make filing and future retrieval very easy, I've changed the matter in which I date my folders and it just again changed some months ago.

A few weeks by chance I met a North Beach neighbor as I was returning from shooting the sunset at the top of Lombard Street, and we spoke and exchanged website addresses. We've spoken a few times online and today went together on a short two-hour walk from North Beach toward the Financial District....

It was a very leisurely walk at a nice relaxing pace, and talking as we walked, reminded me of a time looong ago in Spain when I would get together with spanish friends on short foto trips.... Except for that time, almost all of my life behind a camera has been quite solitary - not that I mind... It's strange to be with someone, even another photographer, when almost all your life behind the camera (and in my case it's been over 35 years of being a magic-box operator) and in studios, location shoots, weddings and all sorts of environmental portraiture, I have been alone. So today was a unique day.....

The first thing I noticed right off was that being Sunday, the grand masses of people mixed with tourists and frantic bankers (ok, jes kidding) were nowhere to be seen. The streets once we passed through Chinatown were basically empty as compared to the normal weekday chaos. It was actually a welcome silence except for the few cars traveling through these streets and of course: the clang and historic rumble of the cable cars.

I love the architecture of the City and though it's quite different from the centuries-old architecture of Europe and my familiar Spain, what the City offers is no simple sand-dune sculpture!
I don't drive through the Financial District often but the few days I do, you can recognize me easily: head and eyes looking up from the depths of the Valley of Glass, eyeing this and that, and even sometimes grabbing a camera - or cell phone - and snapping a few quick images of the great scenics the downtown offers. I love the huge glass windows but I also love the tall seemingly endless climb to the sky the building perspective offers. But what intrigues me most are the gorgeous reflections spied that is displayed from the glass.... it's to die for!!!

On foot and with camera in hand, I can spend time to catch little details I wouldn't otherwise see from a moving car... and I love the details in the downtown. To see the differences between a buildings dating back several life generations, then to see the comparsion with a nearby glass building is something so beautiful yet strange, is to invoke a sense of madness in the modern architects, wondering what they must have thought when designing something so far-fetched and in what seems a modern-day struggle for slim lines and out with the detailed and beautiful yesteryear architecture that I love and appreciate.

Sigh....

So, the next time you want to celebrate Spring, go out to the downtown area... you'll be looking both UP and in front.... and you'll be pleasantly surprises at the eye treasures you'll find in the Valley of Glass in San Francisco!

Thanks to teamuck for her company and if you'd like to see some of her images, you'll enjoy her great flora imagery!