¿Qué Onda Guero?

Several friends have asked why I haven’t posted here in such a long time. Several reasons; the chief one being I just haven’t been motivated to post anything.

It’s certainly not for lack of photographic opportunity. I have a decent stock of raw image files, some of which I’m sure are post-worthy, if I had any desire to do the processing on them.

Other reasons:
1. No pc. What? An IT guy who doesn’t own a pc? We’ve had more important things to spend money on and I have no desire to go into debt for this. Also, I’m a Mac snob, and a particular one at that, and that will require even more cash. If you have a few grand lying around just taking up space, feel free to let me take it off your hands.

2. Little time. I’ve simply managed to find other things to do with my time. It takes time to put together a post I’m ok with the world seeing. I’m also a harsh critic of myself.

3. Purpose. Does this thing have a purpose, other than appeasing the little narcissist in me? I don’t know the answer to that.

Regarding the first problem, no pc, I’ve explored the image processing capability of picasa, the only browser-based image editing tool that can process raw image files, and I’m not impressed. Also, I’m not comfortable installing personal software on my work computer, so that rules out tools like photoshop and gimp.

Anyway, I’m droning. I don’t have a conclusion to this random little diatribe. Maybe I’ll figure out what I want to do with this, maybe not.

One last post from my trip out to San Francisco earlier this month. A collection of shots of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A dense fog rolled in suddenly on the afternoon of the 9th.

I got these shots with the rented 400mm telephoto lens, while out in San Francisco. He was perched on a telephone pole about 100 feet away. In the image below, the background you see is a portion of the Golden Gate bridge.

I had to ask Roger for help identifying him but even he had a hard time of it.

It’s a tough call. I’m guessing you saw this in California … Most places in the country, the most common hawk is the Red-tailed, and that’s probably what this is, but I can’t say for sure. It looks like the beak is deformed, which means it might have trouble finding food and perhaps has resorted to eating garbage, which could discolor it’s bill and feathers. I think it’s an immature, which makes the plumage more confusing. And there are various degrees of melanism (the opposite of albinism) which are fairly common in the West. So, if you have a melanistic immature that’s been digging in garbage, it won’t look typical at all. Other possibilities are Rough-legged or Red-shouldered.

I’m going with Red-tailed.

The background in this one is Angel Island.

For my birthday this year, Karen purchased $150.00 worth of lens rentals from lensrentals.com. I rented two lenses in anticipation of my trip to San Francisco: a Carl Zeiss ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar and a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS telephoto. I ended up not getting too many shots with the telephoto, since it rained pretty much the whole weekend and I didn’t come across a whole lot that needed to be telephoto-ed. But I fell in love with that macro lens. The pictures I posted of that tartlette, from Miette Patisserie, were shot with the macro lens.

And then there was this.

We saw a lot of these guys while walking around the forested areas south of the Golden Gate bridge. They seem to really enjoy when it rains. Understandable since they’re covered in mucus all the time. I imagine they get dehydrated pretty easily. The rain broke just long enough for me to attach the macro lens and crawl around in the mud so I could get up close and personal with this fella.

I’ve recently taken a fancy to street photography. I like observing people and imagining what they’re thinking about. Street photography seems to be a logical extension of that. Ideally, the photographer should be discreet. Keep the camera away from your face. Don’t use flash. Learn to see with your hands, so to speak. Unless you’re Bruce Gilden, who breaks all those “rules”.

I shot these with the camera hanging from a strap on my shoulder and I used a remote wireless trigger to trip the shutter.

Miette Patisserie is a San Francisco area pastry shop. I picked this up at their Ferry Building location, on the Embarcadero. It tasted as good as it looked. Creamy and tart lime filling housed in a buttery, crunchy graham cracker crust, topped with smooth, lightly toasted meringue. Not as good as what Karen would’ve made, but pretty good nonetheless.

I pass by Poplar Creek Forest Preserve frequently on my way to work. There are brief windows of time every year when, on some days, the view here will take your breath away. The early morning sun breaking through the trees, burning up the low-lying fog over Bode Lake. It’s simply stunning. The time frame when you can catch this beautiful, almost dreamlike, vision is usually between the last couple weeks of April and the first week of May, as well as the last couple weeks of September and the first week of October. The sun’s azimuth, at those specific times of the year, works perfectly with the composition of the trees and the lake, and the temperature and dew point work to add just the right amount of fog.

I shot these photos about a week after that perfect time of year in the fall. It was a little chillier and a bit more humid than I would’ve liked, so the fog was much more dense. I still like what came out of the camera though.

Some photos from a recent weekend camping excursion to Door county, Wisconsin.

I was hanging out with the 90th infantry division, a.k.a. the Tough ‘Ombres, when this gentleman approached.

A real 90th infantry WWII veteran. Quite a treat.

You may recall, last year I spent a day at Midway Village Museum in Rockford checking out the largest World War II reenactment in the US. Here’s a collection of photos from this year’s reenactment. I shot these in color and desaturated them in Photoshop.