Love affair with Photography: part 1

Cameras are important to me; photography has been an important part of my life and a lifelong hobby.

I remember my first camera I bought when I was in grade school, it was all plastic, in a plastic bag and cost exactly $1.00. It was a 120 roll film camera and I still have some of the photos I took. Next, was a Kodak Instamatic I received for Christmas, with the flash cubes, and I went on through the Polaroids, 35 mm SLR’s, my own darkroom, and into the present digitals. Right now I have approximately ten cameras (more or less), although I usually only use three or four of them.

Through the years I have in my opinion taken some pretty darn good photos. Some people have suggested I should do it for a living but that hasn’t really lured me yet and the more I learn about the professional aspects of photography the more I wonder if I would like it as a job. I think sometimes things you love doing as a hobby like fly fishing, when turned into the drudgery of daily income generation, somehow filters out the joy. I have worked things like weddings, and taking pictures of people’s children, and there is the pressure of not capturing the “most important moment” of someone’s life.

Digital cameras really rock, they have solved the biggest problem and expense of photography…dealing with film. Film isn’t just very expensive, it is also hard to deal with in comparison, and time consuming, and lastly it uses dangerous and polluting chemicals. I used to “bracket” exposures because if you had an important shot, or something that you really wanted to capture, then it was important to get the exposure down. Oftentimes it was unclear what you would really end up with. Now bracketing is cheap and easy, and mistakes can just be deleted. In addition, programs like Photoshop can be used to edit and do the “darkroom” stuff on photos.
So now a person can just shoot and shoot and it costs virtually nothing. There is some talk about what the ethics of photography currently are as far as what is the original image, and what is altered and changed digitally. Edward Weston used to feel there should be no image manipulation at all, even enlargement, and he contact printed his 8”x12” negatives with a lightbulb in his little shack in Carmel.

There are currently so many ways to manipulate digital images it is very hard to tell what is original and real, and what is not.

But images in general are easier than ever to record. Many cameras now are weatherproof and even water pressure proof for very inexpensive prices. The options are endless for today’s photographers. People today can even use film if they really want to be old school and film cameras now are super cheap.

So the question is…with all the choices what is the best camera to have?

Coit Climb

My plan for Election Day in San Francisco was to hit the Ferry building; check out Coit Tower, head back to China Town, and back to the hotel. I left the hotel by Union Square in the morning and walked down to Market Street, this is the financial district of Frisco. I was walking down the street thinking I would catch a streetcar to the water front.

As I was walking along I was struck by how it was a pleasant sunny day but it seemed very dark and depressing on Market Street. The tall buildings blocked out the sun and created a depressing canyon of cold blustery wind on an otherwise perfect November day. The sunshine and I desperately tried to reach each other through the cracks between building blockers.

The old ferry building had a recent re-model and was full of expensive wine and cheese shops. It was trendy-cute, but uninteresting in general. I slowly worked up the Embarcadero, finally in the warm slowing sun and could see Coit Tower in the distance. Fortunately, being on Telegraph Hill it is isolated and not covered up with newer less stylish structures. It sticks up like a lone index finger and can be seen from quite a distance. I was looking around for a taxi or bus to take me up.

It didn’t take too long and I was down below the tower at a small market drinking a water and looking at a cliff on the side of Telegraph Hill figuring how to get around it. I asked a woman walking by and she allowed, “there are stairs, but there is also alot of them”! I walked down and took a couple rights and started walking up the twisted staircase. At the top of that are some slanted walkways and then of course more stairs. It was interesting because they went right through people’s yards and alongside their decks and front doors. I almost felt like I was trespassing in their lives and I imagine they felt that way too judging by a couple stares I got.

I heard squawks and fussing of the wild parrots. I had heard about them of course non-native to the area and I forgot how they got there but they seem quite happy. They are about a foot tall and green with red heads. Also in this area I saw several plants I have not seen anywhere else. Although the climb up was a workout I really enjoyed it and saw more that was interesting than at the tower itself.

I came out on the parking lot and bought a ticket up for five dollars. The elevator is an old manual one that is hand operated. The windows at the top although covered with plexi-glass have coins from around the world lying on the sill. I am not sure the meaning of this custom. I found this amusing ditty on a comments section of a Yelp blog….

“On a personal note, I used to live a block and a half off the "Hose" and as a child not only attended Garfield Elementary School, which is adjacent to the steps leading to the Tower. Walking everyday used to be quite a hike up the hill, bumping into our legendary "Long John" who would chase us part way home and dance an Irish Jig or the Waltz in the center of any intersection on the streets of Telegraph Hill. The kids and I in the "hood" used to venture about the hidden cave (before they closed because of toxic "gas" fumes) In the cave, you would have found Native American etchings on the wall. When I think of how fortunate we were not to have fallen or slipped down that cliff! And, sometimes my brother and I would bring our flashlights and check out the "make-outs" in the parking lot of the Tower and bang on their car doors to shake em up. Yup, I was one of the Lil' Rascals”

The bottom of the tower is circled with huge, famous murals that some think are the work of Diego Rivera but actually just inspired by Diego Rivera, which means ahhh….Anyway, they were painted by students from the California School of Fine Arts.

By the time I got down, wandered through Grant Street in Chinatown and got back to the hotel I was totally shot, but I felt like I had really seen the city in a non-tourist kinda way. So many parts of the city are either encapsulated by the water on the small peninsula there, or can be seen from there, that the city seemed very user friendly to me in a non-car touring way.

Michael Mina-Union Square San Francisco

While in San Francisco recently, on the day of the historic election 2008, my wife Lisa and I had dinner at Michael Mina. http://www.michaelmina.net/mm/ It was rated as two stars in the Michelin Guide which was the highest rated restaurant in downtown San Francisco.

I wanted to go to the French Laundry based on a story I read from Tony Bourdain. Bourdain is one of my favorite writers and personalities with his world-wide food show now on the travel channel. I have read just about all of his books and remember where he once stated that the “French Laundry was the best restaurant in the world”, this sincerely impressed me, since it is so rare to hear that about an American restaurant. Unfortunately, it was some way out of town in the northern wine country, and of course, I also heard it took “three months” to get reservations from some affected dude at William Sonoma on Union Square.

So in looking around and finding Michael Mina only two blocks away it was the logical choice!

We had the seasonal Prix Fixe menu: I had the bacon wrapped scallops, the Brant Farm beef, and the Quince Fall spices for dessert, Lisa went with the Dungeness crab, Elysian Fields Lamb and the Chocolate Florals. In addition, there were two other courses which were “compliments of the chef”. The first was the starter and included a lobster salad and the last was a type of hand-made ice cream pops that was most delicious. http://www.michaelmina.net/mm/pdf/Prix%20Fixe%20Menu.pdf

I was very impressed with the plates and dishes which seemed to have been custom made just for that particular restaurant and their menu. The service was excellent. One distraction was the constant picture taking with goo-goo patrons trying to capture their moments in the sublime; the other was the pro-Obama rally gathering outside with their compliment of police escorts, their chanting to rhyme.

The bill ran $322 for two, with no booze. The most impressive thing to me was the collection of tastes designed in a certain progression. In other words, for the scallop plate the three bay scallops were all in different presentations and were to be eaten in a certain order from left to right, and I did in fact think each was better than the last. An excellent meal, in a highly recommended restaurant, that befit a perfectly caught historical moment in times of good living....