Pride

The best part about Pride is the basically unmitigated joy the people marching seem to be taking in it. It helps that the rainbows keep you upbeat visually and encourage me to shoot color, too. :)

Drum Corps

As Pride goes on, the sun crests the edges of Market Street and starts roasting everything in hard light. I brought along my flash in the hopes of providing some fill, and got a few shots I liked.

I saw these dummers in black with white-white drums coming down market, and saw my shot -- the flash is used to light up their faces and pop the whites on the drums a little more.

Strike a Pose

One of the pieces of advice I got for my portrait class is that I should embrace my inner Director.

Less charitable observers might refer to this as my inner fascist.

I saw this guy coming by and I loved the character of his face and the profile of his upper body set against the building. So, I gestured with my camera and shouted something like, "Strike a pose!". Like any good model, he gave me more than I bargained for. ;)

Up in the Sky

Cheer SF is some sort of cheerleading organizations for adults in SF. They keep showing up at Pride and engaging in elaborate acrobatics -- which really makes for some interesting compositions (how often do you see people flung into the air on Market Street?).

Designing Women

Apologies for the lengthy delay in updating my blog -- I was finishing up portrait work for my class, went on a three week road trip, and then I've been catching up since then.

Every year in San Francisco, we have a ginormous Pride Parade. It's an amazing event, in part because its roots in a celebration of political freedom lead to a lot of personal expression in a lot of areas out on the street. I've taken some of my favorite portraits there, and I look forward to it every year.

The challenges in photographing Pride are manifest: Along with the general mob scene, for 3/3 years running the light has been scorching and cloudless once it jumps over the tops of the buildings on Market Street. The solution to all these problems is to show up early, before the parade starts, and just wander around to catch the early morning chaos.

The bad news for me is that I thought taking Caltrain was a good idea. It was thirty minutes late (swarming with parade goers), and they didn't bother to run an early train this year. So, I only had about ten minutes before the parade started -- but that's where I shot this.

Taking photos of mannequins in storefronts is normally a trap for photographers. I don't get a lot out of it, and I'm generally not moved. This scene, though, worked for me in a way that was unexpected -- and it was the first shot from Pride this year that I liked.

Jeepers Creepers

My girlfriend gets her hair cut over on Haight Street, and I went there with her since we were going to a friend's birthday party afterwards. Haight was having none of photography by 11 -- lots of hard light, and kind of a slow day, so I decided to step into Golden Gate Park.

I don't spend a lot of time in GGP -- it's sort of out of the way for the places I go in the city, so I always discover something new when I visit. This time, I had a little something more specific in mind. A woman in my portraits class had been to the Conservatory of Flowers there a few years back for a shoot, and I was impressed with the light I saw. Never one to be denied good light, I decided to check it out. :)

It's an interesting place -- with some decent light, but even with the frosted glass, I felt like direct sunlight was really hammering things. Would love to see it on an overcast day!

Anyway, that left me taking pictures of flowers, which is really not my thing. Did manage to catch this interesting plant though, which is one of those pitcher plants, who helpfully also look like something out of our collective horticultural nightmares.

Rearview

I've been spooked out by images in the rearview mirror of cars ever since I saw this Twilight Zone episode as a kid.

I was at an intersection and was looking in my rearview mirror. Brought out my 80-400 (which explains the focus and weird shake) and snapped this. Was flipping through it later in post and it kind of captured my imagination, and it's been growing on me.