:Always Breaking

The Tour of California bike race is happening this week. On Monday, the race came through Sonoma County and one of my favorite towns, Tomales. My daughter and I drove out to Tomales, or rather to a spot on Hwy 1 near Tomales, to watch the race. I picked the spot because it was out of the town in the middle of cow pastures. I was surprised that about 50 other people thought it would be a good place to watch. That actually made it a little more fun and exciting.

Tomales is not in my immediate community, but I feel it is part of my extended community, and biking is definitely part of my community. Tomales has the best bakery on the West Coast, Tomales Bakery. I visit as often as I can, and pretty much every time I go to Dillon Beach, probably my favorite beach. I used to ride out to Tomales at lunch on my bike on a regular basis, but my latest job makes that ride a bit of stretch.

There are a lot of bikers in Petaluma and Sonoma County, so the Tour generates a lot of excitement in this area. The route the race takes is popular with riders, although I prefer some of the back roads with fewer cars. The stage ends in Santa Rosa, where large crowds gather to watch the final laps in the center of downtown. I haven’t gone to watch the end of the stage, but I hear it is quite an event. The tour web site has a live race tracker if you want to follow along during the day.

This shot was taken as part of the 2008 Challenge at photochallenge.org. You can see where the shot was taken by viewing the Geotag on Zooomr.

Here’s a shot of Jackson Stewart, who had an 11 minute lead when these shots were taken:

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What a busy week it’s been. I haven’t had much time for photos or blogging. I did grab this shot on Halloween before the trick-or-treat madness started. I don’t bike much these days, but really want to get started again. I seem to always hurt myself when I try to exercise, but hopefully I can get back into it soon.

I’ve also posted couple of more shots on Zooomr:

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I went into the little town of Penngrove for lunch yesterday and stopped by the park to take pictures. The park is one of the few with old, metal playground equipment, the kind all parks had when I was a kid. We’ve taken the kids there a few times, and they always have fun.

It’s not a fancy, shinny new park, but it has a lot of heart and character. You can easily imagine generations of kids playing there. I can easily picture kids from any time in the last 60 years swinging and sliding and laughing here. While the new playground equipment offers twisty slides, climbing walls, and rubber coated steps, they just lack character.

Shot Details

Shooting Date: 9/25/2007 12:48:40
Shutter Speed: 1/125Sec.
Aperture Value: F3.5
ISO Speed:200
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 18.0 mm

I took several other shots that I posted on Zooomr, here are a few:

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Just a shot today. Taken at the de Young Museum, San Francisco. Again, I don’t know the artist or the name of the piece. Let me know if you do. Larger view: http://static.zooomr.com/images/3260068_f23d53a0b3_b.jpg

Shot Details

Shooting Date: 8/18/2007 15:42:14
Shutter Speed: 1/60Sec.
Aperture Value: F6.3
Exposure Compensation: -1/3
ISO: 800
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 46.0 mm

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Here’s one from the archive. Nearly a month ago my family and I took a day trip to San Francisco to walk the Golden Gate Bridge and visit the de Young Museum. This is one of the shots from the de Young. Unfortunately I didn’t write down the artist or title. I would like to give credit, so if you know please email me.

I don’t have much experience photographing art work, and most of the exhibit halls have poor lighting for photography, so I didn’t take a lot of pictures. The lighting is great for showcasing the works of art, but there’s just not enough light for shooting photos. The museum has a “no flash” rule, so that wasn’t an option. I had been scolded for not carrying my backpack below my waist, so didn’t want to push my luck with a flash. All my shots from the museum have a lot of noise from cranking up the ISO.

The de Young has an amazing collection of art. There really is no way to describe it because the collections span every time period, medium, and style. No matter what your taste in art, there’s something there for you. We only spent a couple of hours there, but I really could have spent the whole day. My two younger kids got a little bored, but behaved exceptionally. Kids need a lot of stimulation and interactivity to really become engage in something (other than TV). While I think it’s good to expose them to the arts at a young age, I don’t want to do it at the expense of others enjoying it. My kids were great, but I don’t want to take them there for an entire day. I’ll go back soon with my wife and oldest daughter and really take my time. Then we’ll take the whole family to the zoo.

I didn’t take art history in college and really don’t know much about art, I just know what catches my attention and draws me in. It’s hard to pick a favorite from that day given the short amount of time we were there, but the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit running until September 23, 2007 really stands out nearly a month later. Maybe that’s because it is a photography exhibit, but I don’t think so. There is something truly magical about his work. To be honest, I had never seen his work before, but he instantly became one of my favorites. He makes photography a true art form. I’m glad I got to experience it in person the first time I saw it. Seeing it in a book or online does not have the same impact. The “Sea of Buddha” is amazing to see in person. Well worth the price of admission just to see that one piece.

Shot Details

Shooting Date: 8/18/2007 15:52:24
Shutter Speed: 1/25Sec.
Aperture Value: F5.6
ISO Speed:1600
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 46.0 mm

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Today I was having lunch with my wife downtown while the kids were at school, and I saw this 20ish guy with a Canon T70 camera. I asked him about the camera and we struck up a quick conversation on photography. Turns out he’s taking black and white photography class at the local Junior College and using his parents old 35mm film camera. I blogged about the photography I did back in college using my T70 and even posted a picture of my camera on Zooomr.

He probably wasn’t born when I got my camera, and said he thought his parents got his camera before he was born. My old T70 is broken and had been stored in the attic until a couple of weeks ago when I decided to use my 50mm lens for Poor Man’s Macro shots. I had also had the 75-200mm lens pictured here. Since I wasn’t using it anymore I offered it to the him for free. He was extremely grateful and shocked. This evening I dropped the lens off to him at work (he works in grocery store that I had to go to anyway). He still couldn’t quite believe his good fortune.

I was happy to give him the lens. It was doing me no good and he will put it to good use. He seems to really enjoy photography, and is wondering if he can make a career of it. Maybe someday he’ll be a famous photographer and I can say I helped him get started. I was also touched by his response. He was genuinely thankful and excited. A lot of kids I’ve seen around have a sense off entitlement, like the world owes them something. Not this young man. He’s working hard, going to college, and loves photography.

So here’s to Steven, a budding young photographer using recycled equipment to shoot black and white film. I can’t wait to see his work.

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Just a photo today. Something a little different from my normal shots. I was driving around, saw this, and took some shots. It’s been cropped and processed a bit, but that’s what I intended when I shot it.

Have a good weekend, I’ll be busy so probably won’t post over the holiday.

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I’ve been experimenting again with Poor Man’s Macro with the reverse 50mm lens I mentioned before. What I’ve learned so far is that the focus ring on the reverse lens doesn’t make much difference. None that I could tell. It’s also better to use manual focus on the normal lens, otherwise it has to hunt around a lot, or you have set a single focal point and not an average. For this picture I think I used manual focus, but it can remember for sure.

It also helps if you can steady your hand against something while shooting to reduce forward-backward movement. Getting the focus just right is tricky, so you want to be as still as possible. This Lego man was on top of my dresser so I could steady myself on the dresser. The dresser is right next to the window, which faces roughly southwest so the sun was shining through quite nicely.

In terms of processing, I didn’t do much - just some contrast. The vignetting is from the reverse lens, but it worked nicely for this shot. I probably should have wiped the dust off before shooting. Next time.

Shot Details

Taken 8/30/2007 6:17 PM (GMT-8)
F/8
1/125 second
54mm
ISO 500

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Here’s the first photo from my Point Bonita shoot last weekend. With the eclipse, kids going back to school, and work it’s been hard to find time to go through the images and pick some to post.

To be honest, I wasn’t happy with my shooting that day. It was a fogging day, so everything looked really flat. Point Bonita has incredible views of the Golden Gate and the western part of San Francisco, but the fog made it difficult for me to shoot any nice landscapes. I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the old military bunkers. For some reason, they are good subjects for me.

I also spent a bit more time processing the images. Normally I do a little brightness and contrast adjustment, maybe some cropping, but not much else. For these shots because the lighting was so flat, I played with curves more to bring out the colors and add depth. For this shot I applied a colored filter to bring out certain tones and did some pretty drastic curves adjustments. I’m starting to experiment more with post-processing on some shots, but I’m not sure how I like it. I tend to be more of a “get right in the camera” photographer, but sometimes some shots just need more help. When I took this shot I planned on a lot of processing and intended it to be black and white. I guess the more abstract the shot, the more processing I’m willing to do. When shooting I usually do think about what level of processing I’ll do on the computer when I get home. I knew this image would have a lot or processing.

One thing I’ve learned while working with RAW images is that I need a faster computer with more RAM. My 1.5 GHz with 512 MB of RAM is just too slow. Maybe I’ll get a new motherboard and processor instead of buying some of the photo gear I’ve been planning on.

There are more Point Bonita shots on Zooomr; I’ll probably blog a couple of them this week. You can view this one on Zooomr with a GeoTag. Since Zooomr isn’t showing EXIF info, I’m including it on the blog posts. I’ll update this post later with that info.

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This will be a quick post, trying to maintain the shot a day idea (although it has been a very long time since I’ve posted on consecutive days.)

Yesterday I went out to Point Bonita in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area with my family to hike around and shoot some pictures. We followed that up with dinner at Joe’s Taco Lounge in Mill Valley. Joe’s is the best Taco Lounge around. To this day I have not found a better chicken burrito. The decor of the place really makes the experience. The walls are lined with hot sauce, as shown in the image above. There’s also plenty of religious artwork and icons as well. It’s only a couple of miles of 101, so stop by if you get the chance.

Tonight I plan on getting up to shoot the eclipse, but have splitting headache at the moment, so I’m playing it by ear.

Shot Details:
Taken August 26, 2007
Mill Valley, CA
Aperture: 4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 800

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