the wind never arrived....

Big storms were forecast to hit the Bay Area over the weekend with heavy rains and even high winds last night. The winds did pick up... then died weakly. I was happy. I rather have wet stuff on my face dripping down rather than wet stuff blown into my face.

Saturday I attended the exhibit closing party of a friend's gorgeous display of flora images. Held at the Collectively GRASP environmental art gallery in North Beach just a few meters from me, I've attended quite a few of the exhibits in my short year and a half in the City, though I have no hopes of ever showing there.
Even the previous owner promised me a gallery show there, then prompted closed the gallery and moved away. This owner seems to be following the same path of not showing my work..... I don't care either way.... it's no use worrying about something beyond my control.... but still: it hurts when I see others' work hanging there and seems so easy for them, but so difficult for me. Still I am always happy when a fellow photographer has the good fortune to exhibit and even to sell some work; of course there is nobody who wishes the same good luck for me, but I am used to that.....

Now it's Sunday and I've been lazying around the house all day..... okay, I keep forgetting I am not in my house, and I actually have just one room that I live in, work in, etc. It's sad and gets me miserable, so I have been trying to stay out of the place as much as possible..... spending as much time possible on the street weather permitting when not spending my usual 29 hours on the computer working on fotos. I still cannot believe I have been living over a year in a tiny filled room instead of my roomy clean apartment back in southern Spain.

sigh....

Right now as I look out the window, it's been raining all day and in the last 45mins, has increased to a steady downpour. If the rain continues I probably won't go out at 6am tomorrow to see if I can snap Lance Armstrong zipping across the Golden Gate Bridge, with many other riders who have paid $500 each for the "honor" of riding with him..... geeesh.....

Tuesday starts my first day of jury duty - my first ever as I have been out of the country for so many decades!! I have a book I carried with me from my spanish apartment that I'll bring with me, and hopefully I won't finish it on the very first day of jury duty! I have mixed feelings about the US court system.... sometimes I don't think it first or just, and other times I think it's downright stupid. Of course, my opinions won't count as I have no experience in this area.

It's still raining..... but I can also see it's been in the high 60s or low 70s back at my apartment location.... but I know it'll be actually warmer than that.....

2 hours to copy four gigs

oops!! Make that three hours!! I finally broke down and yesterday purchased a 500gig external hard drive. Gosh ~ I remember when 500megs cost almost a thousand dollars alone!!!! In trying to manage my image files, I have run out of room everywhere! On my desktop's 160gig HD, I don't have too many corners still available... I had purchased a 350gig external HD in Spain before departing in 2006 and that is now filled, though I have frantically been trying to burn off the files during the last few weeks and months - with little success as each week I shoot more, adding to my backlog and worklist.

Last night it took four hours to format the new HD, then after a reboot it took another three hours to partition it to make organizing the files better and easier. As I type this, I am moving the files slowly over to the 500giger from the 350gig HD, and to move 4gigs it's taking an average of three hours.... grrrr

Luckily, while last weekend attending the opening exhibit at my friend's gallery collectively Grasp when she introduced me to a musical website where you can hear your style of music, all the while remembering your likes and dislikes, then searches for more music that fit your musical likes so you only hear the type of music you enjoy, and those similar. I love it.... The other day I listened to about five hours of flamenco guitar music which I really love, and makes me miss Spain even more. Right now I'm listening to Dido-type music while moving these massive files and am enjoying with immense pleasure the tunes of these different artists with a similar style, many whom I've never known by name but by their music.

Once I get everything moved to the new external HD, I'll format the other external and partition that also, something I've been trying to do but not really, since I have over 280gigs of images on there and I didn't want to risk losing them in the case something happen during the partitioning process....

Suuuuure, all this should keep me again in front of the monitor for about a month at the very least!!!

In the meanwhile, my eyes and vision continue to slowly improve as they heal... I've driven a few times at night now and am happy I can see better in dim light where I am not uncomfortable driving blindly into the darkness as it was that situation previously. I often like to look around ~ for example while stopped at a red light ~ and see distant billboards, buildings etc, to test my vision and how I couldn't see something clearly last week, and now can. I can clearly see 18'x24' billboards a block away well, and other lettering farther as well. "Seeing" is to define the act of seeing sharp focused edges, define the lettering, the message and sharp lines; and the ability to see low-contrast colors as opposed to brighter colors.

Hey!!! Only two and a half hours remaining on the copying to the new HD!!!!

Just a picture captured while around the city as Halloween nears; snapped with my Motorola RZR cell phone camera...

another gallery showing finished....

well, I just returned home from picking up my framed images from the group show in Berkeley. What can I say? It was my first actual gallery showing in the United States, first time showing in the Bay Area, and the first-ever display in my life as a photographer to be attended by any of my family, since I have only exhibited previously outside of the United States; my sister and one of my three brothers attended the opening night.

While I didn't sell anything, I was present to see, hear and read many fantastic comments about my work, especially the four Kat Love images that I had framed two images each vertically matted within a single black frame. It was hung on the wall behind the gallery's front room high on the wall behind the workspace counter, and on opening night there were several people who just stood there, motionless in the bustle of an opening night in a small crowded gallery, just staring at my fotos. It was a great pleasure for me to see such reactions, and it moved me deeply. I always have thought I have an immense talent for photography, and to see it recognized in one way or another is always good for the general morale of an artist - and I do consider myself an artist. I also needed that morale boost a lot!!

I was hoping one of the Kat Love images would be sold; they were priced quite inexpensively so I could recoup at least the framing costs, but that didn't happen. Of course, I couldn't afford to frame my images so my sister graciously paid for the framing. Oh well.... now I start looking for another location where I can hang and show my art.

I continue my occasional breaks from boxing, cleaning and moving boxes of stuff down six flights of stairs, these breaks for my photography being my sole source of relaxation and diversion from the cleaning and organizing. This weekend I'm hoping to get some pictures of the triathlon starting from the Marina, plus later the same day, to tour the interior of San Francisco's City Hall which I have heard is very ornate and beautiful; I've been wanting to see it but because of my hectic crazy schedule haven't found the time to do it. It'll be an eye-opener I'm sure!

As always, I have many images displayed at my website plus some samples of my second-ever session with a mature male nude model.

Here are some images I've created in the past few weeks/months:

Raelyn Mouse in Oakland (I think that was the location)


FitnFifty helps me find the light



Union Street Fair offers some great "still-life"



the Bay Area is a cup of light and shadows no matter when one looks