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.

Light Over the 80

I had a busy weekend -- went to a bachelorette party in Santa Cruz, and then took B to Napa for Easter. On the way up, it started raining. Fortunately, the clouds broke a little as we headed up the 80, and then a little light peaked through. I reached for the camera, and tried as best as I could to shoot around B (who was driving), and managed to get this. It's not technically perfect (there's a little shake from all the scrambling around), but the light really sings here.

I used this as my class assignment this week for "light as the subject", and was pretty happy with it.

d20

While this picture indelibly brands me as a nerd (which probably comes as no surprise), I also (no, really) think it actually works as an image. No cropping or anything either -- but I found myself looking at it about a half dozen times today, puzzled myself at why I felt like it worked.

Improbably, I still think it does.