busy day in the City

The morning started early with my files... During the previous day I had tried to copy/move my milllion image files to the newer hard drive... it took hours so I would leave and go shooting on the streets of San Francisco... when I returned, the operation aborted for some unknown reason and now I'd have to compare both folders on the source and destination locations, and copy the files not moved.... what a pain. So, I decided to just back-up all of the files. It'd just be a slight duration of a few days!

That operation in progress, I started by climbing the hills again to Telegraph Hill. Today Coit Tower was celebrating its long existence and was offering free elevator rides to the top; something I've never experienced in my life though I faintly remember a school field trip as a very young child. The view was amazing from the top, and it was well worth the trip up those hills and the stairs! Plus there were old fire engines and a display of period callsic old cars, and the Mayor would be speaking later that day - I didn't stick around but did get pixs of the engines and cars.
Last night I had heard online that a zeppelin would be flying over the city! So, I drove to Crissy Field then walked toward Fort Point at the base of the southern tower of the Golden Gate bridge..... stopping enroute to snap away at birds and more.
By time I reached a halfway point, lo and behold there was a huge white airship coming toward the bridge from the south... I started taking pixs with both a 170-500 and the wide-angle, finishing up with my standard 28-300. Many sunning at the beach were looking up at the airship, and there was a fireboat throwing up streams of water in celebration; this is the first time since the 1940s that an airship has flown over the City!!

That done, I went walking back to the Crissy Field marsh and photographed the birds there...
it's a "clean" marsh but getting filthier every week... but still... getting close and tight one can see the water and not the cups, plastic and filth... though it's still there!!

That done, I drove home, parked the car and walked toward Chinatown to see a friend who was participating in the San Francisco ARTwalk... I wanted to participate too but didn't have the money for printing the pictures, storing them in some protective sleeves, etc. It's not cheap nor easy to sell or even display images!! This morning I was starving as I hadn't eaten anything all day and had already walked a few miles, plus now will be walking up some steep North Beach hills, so I stopped at my previously favorite dim-dum place for a few snacks. They had depleted their supply of shrimp dumplings, so I took what remained - two - then grabbed some pork thingies that I liked too... the taste of the shrimp dumpling wasn't what I was used to... much has changed in the few months since I'd stopped there before. I went and found my photographer friend on Mason Street in front of the Cable Car Museum and stopped and chatted for an hour... she has an uncanny eye for flora details, and I love her work!!

After that I walked up and down those same steep hills again and drove my sister to a birthday party for her grandson and her brother-in-law.... I dropped her off to finish with the backing up of my files, plus to download the images of the morning and the zeppelin, etc.

I now went to the birthday party and spent over 3 hours there and finally returned to discover the backup operation continuing and now only two days and quite a few hours remaining!!

a running fool's life

... imagine seeing someone running through the streets... obviously not dressed to be a jogger since he's wearing street clothes. Another indication he's not a jogger could be he's holding in his hand a very big camera with a long lens.

Not a jogger!!!

Well, if you thought that scene to be out of a flick, think not! That would be me, running about two miles Tuesday night as this idiot wanted to catch the almost full moon rising over the East Bay hills.... then after waiting 20mins realized that the moon's angle is wrong and want it "lower" in the sky, so now I decided to run from about Union Street and Vallejo to the Embarcadero and Pier 14. Gasping for air, snaps a bunch of the Bay Bridge with the moon above, then decides to run back toward Broadway and ~ seeing the Transamerica Building ~ stop to capture that in the darkening night sky, then on a sidestep, spies that green Sentinel Building and now distracted, spend twenty minutes snapping that too..... after all, it's not often this lad with a camera gets out at night to discover the night! And all this without a tripod!!

Pooped to hell and back, he rests till today when he spies a great cloudy sky as sunset nears, and decides on a whim to get the sunset from a different spot, so he runs up Greenwich Street to Telegraph Hill, where ~ out of breath again ~ encounters a tourist couple whose boyfriend is busying "watering" the green bushes by the walkway leading to the top of the hill... I detected a spanish-sounding accent and in Spain it's commonplace for males to look for any place to urinate.... I was going to ask if he was from Spain but thought better of it as I was in a hurry to get the sunset which was minutes away.... gasp, pant, gasp....

Near to the top, I see a spot not blocked by tree limbs or bushes. I stood there for about ten minutes while not even two feet away a man dressed in dark clothing burned a small stove in the bushes, crouched below the bush-level. As I started to capture the setting sun, he started banging a spoon on metal chant-style, and I wondered if what he was doing was a spell to shoo me away from his camp location for the night. I left in a few minutes, running again to the top of the hill, only to see trees and even taller bushes blocking any possible view, but I did see the statue of Columbus there backlit by the setting sun's golden glow upon the clouds.

I looked skyward; a BIG mistake and decided (I'm really crazy when I go snapping away and I've had an otherwise boring few days standing for hours for four days shooting the roaring jets) to go DOWN the backside of Telegraph Hill to the Embarcadero (ooooh no, not again!) and snap Coit Tower against the red flaming clouds above...... so I ran down the 300+ steps and was shocked I didn't fall not once - usually I fall when I have camera in hand) and started snapping away yet again at street level....
....then I see a lighted water fountain and those glimmering lights and that dark and shiny reflections of light caught my eye...... if you're a technie type, the data on the fountain pix is about a four-second exposure without a tripod, the camera on the ground, me lying next to it and keys and whatever else I had in my pockets to level the camera and angle the lense down to my subject.... wot fun!!

An hour and a half later I got home..... I think I'll stay away from my camera for a few days. Maybe if I moved everything around again, I'll lose my camera and I won't have to run anytime soon.....

yea right!
This is a picture captured with my cell phone camera, showing my camera on the ground (without me) as I snapped away at the fountain to get the picture above.... neatoooo tripod, huh? hahahahaaa

I saw an interesting scene during that chase for the full moon: I am walking ~ slow for once ~ down the street and notice a man loudly talking in chinese but holding at shoulder-height a square object in his hands. As I near, I can see that object is a laptop, and instantly, I know what he is doing... I've done it myself! He is holding the laptop equipped with a webcam toward Russian Hill and the dying golden glow of that night's sunset. Through this modern technology that we so take for granted these days, this man is probably talking to friends or family in China and using his wireless net access, walk outside with his laptop and share that sunset with his friends a world away.....

Then, on the other hand, why can't people direct their thoughts in one precise direction? Why does someone have to talk using this same technology but act in such a confusing matter that it's a headache foir both that individual and myself? To make matters worst, this individual acts as if they are talking to someone else. Nooooo, this person doesn't say my name, but refers to other named persons. Not only is this insulting that they cannot say my name, but it's confusing.

I don't get headaches often.... maybe once every two years, and this is the first one in probably that period.... and I don't like having a headache caused by someone's tactlessness.

grrrrrrrr

.... and still, as in every country I've lived in... why am I still watching sunsets alone? I hate being in this place and wish I were elsewhere. Anywhere but here.....

Hot or Not?

The past few days have been forecast to be hot in the City, but while the heat stayed in the high 90s and even surpassed the 100s around the Bay Area, in my City it's breezy and not even in the 80s. Yet, I find it so amazing how one area of the City can have sun while the other half is draped with fog! Just a mystery that I love to explore and even more in viewing!

I had a nice foto shoot in Half Moon Bay during the last weekend, where I met with a Chico teen model and shot with her. It's sad and disappointing to think that in such a populous area as is San Francisco, I can't find a real and serious "model" to work with. The few models there are seem to be immature and even more irresponsible, expressing a fleeting desire to work and saying a quick "hi" then disappearing faster than this fog that rolls in at night. All of the real models I have worked with have all been from outside the City.

In the past few days the winds have yet again shifted, allowing us to be smoked everyday with the gray haze ~ a result of smoke from the 300+ fires all over California. Health advisories have been issued and in a town north of my City near Chico named Paradise (Butte County), it was reported yesterday that the health issue due to the thick smoke was so bad that even the machine used to measure the air particles for these advisories, broke and had to be restarted and the measurements obtained manually!

Here's a picture from my rooftop this morning.... it shows an orange sun rising over the East Bay and Telegraph Hill.