Country Squire Wagon #1 (click image to view large)

The car reminds me of a girl I knew in high school. She used to go around saying that a fortune teller told her she would not live to be 21. Of course I didn’t believe her. But it turned out to be true.

Hula Lights (click image to view large)

I’m just starting to work on a website for the care facility where my mom now lives. Last weekend I went over to talk to them about the project and to shoot some photos. It was another bizarrely beautiful spring day in January here in the SF Bay Area. I don’t know if I ended up with anything suitable for the site, but there were some shots that turned out nicely anyway.

Green House (click image to view large)

As you may remember, about this time last year I embarked on a project to photograph all, every inch, of Albany’s commercial streetscapes. Granted, this only amounts to two streets that intersect and are each about a mile long. It is not a big place, but that still amounts to a few hundred shots to get every linear inch of it all. And I didn’t finish all of it until July.

For this, I really wanted to go for a sharpness that I don’t often worry that much about. I did it all on a tripod with the sharpest lens I have, a 35mm prime. And–well, I’m going to out myself here as a basic idiot, but I’ll proceed anyway–I also thought I would stop down to get deep depth of field and the best sharpness I could. So I shot the whole thing at f/16. So, short of going really far, like using mirror-up mode to reduce vibration, I thought I was going to get the sharpest results possible with my current gear. But somehow,… the results weren’t really that great. The shots didn’t look as I imagined they would.

Today I may have discovered why. I happened across a discussion of techniques for sharpness on a photographer community site, and it turns out that while depth of field increases at smaller apertures, after about f/8 or f/11, diffraction creeps up and results in a general out-of-focus softness. This is something landscape photographers deal with in trying to balance deep depth of field with maximum sharpness. Needless to say, I won’t be reshooting the project. But I will be remembering the lesson for a long time.

El Camino (click to view large)

Theo has a video project to interview somebody doing something, and to shoot each step of the process. He decided to interview me about taking photographs. This is a picture we took across the street to illustrate the process. It sort of reminds of  a cow for some reason. Maybe I’ll post the video later, when he’s all done with it.

#2 (click image to view large)

A first pass at working with some night shots from earlier this evening.

#1 (click image to view large)

#3 (click image to view large)

Effie turns 93 (click to view large)

My mother turned 93 or so, Monday, or so. We’re not really sure about any of it, but that’s what her US passport says. Of course, I had to work yesterday, so I brought her to my house on Sunday.  We didn’t really do anything special to celebrate per se. We just hung out for a while in the late morning, had some vasilopita (Greek new year’s bread) and Greek coffee. We talked about the same things over and over; I told her it was her birthday and how old she is, how old I am. I tried to clarify again how long I’ve been married, how old her grandson is, and so on. Then, after a while, the familiar cadence of alertness and fatigue progressed and she was ready to go home to the facility.

There was never much emphasis on anyone’s birthday in my family. I suppose this is because Greeks celebrate name days more so than birthdays, but in America that seemed only to happen as a brief mention during or after church. Consequently, I never had a real sense of either of my parents as celebrated or as celebratory. They just plugged away, day after day. (I, of course, had birthday parties, but they were typically muted affairs. Three or four friends would come over for cake and we’d run around in the back yard for a couple of hours.) Once I was older, I tried to celebrate both of my parents birthdays. I wanted to show my love for them, but in my American grown-up way. Neither ever seemed very comfortable with it. Maybe it was because they were already quite old and didn’t really want to be reminded, I don’t know.

Anyway, she seemed pretty sturdy and in good shape, all things considered–especially in the flannel shirt. I’d never seen it before, so I suspect it was a holiday gift to one of the other residents. They don’t seem to worry much about whose article of clothing is whose at her place. The glasses aren’t hers either. That’s probably just as well; hers have the thickest lenses I’ve ever seen and resulted from, I think, communication problems and confusion at her last eye exam a couple of years ago. She  can’t tell how far away anything, like the next step or the handrail, is when she wears them.

But she did pretty good on this day.

So, happy birthday, ma. Here’s to another year.

Reflexive Meta-Level #2 (click image to view large)

Art + Coffee = ??

Reflexive Meta-level #1 (click image to enlarge)

First in a series. There is nothing new about art taking art as its subject, either generally or with respect to some specific aspect, such as the role or situation of the viewer. Nonetheless, I am noticing a pattern in my work of noticing the viewer, and I aim to follow it to see where it leads.

Sun and Plume (click image to view large)

For several years, I had thought about this shot along I-80 in Berkeley, back when I commuted to Emeryville. Each morning when the conditions were just so, I would think to myself that I should try to take a photo, and that I should be ready the next time. And each day, I would get to work, start my day of worries and promptly forget about it. Then I didn’t have that commute anymore and really did forget all about it. Then, the other day, I drove to work instead of biking and the sun was was out, and there it was again. And there was my camera on the seat next to me. Now, shooting photos while driving in rush hour traffic is not too smart or safe, so I didn’t linger long. This is not what I imagined was possible with the scene, but it is a start. Perhaps if I can get someone else to drive while I hang out the back window I can see what we can do.

Plume #2 (click image to view large)

End of Shift (click image to view large)

This was the view from my window at work in Oakland the other day. It has been pretty dramatic for several weeks now. Usually I don’t notice while I’m still working because I have the shade down and I’m hurrying to wrap things up and head home.