The Backstreets Of Half Moon Bay

Spent a pleasant morning with my friend Shawn exploring the back streets of Half Moon Bay. Since Shawn is never without a Leica M series camera, I decided to bring a camera too, just in case our brunch turned into a walk-and-shoot around the town, accompanied by a round table discussion for two, as it always does.

Shawn is a serious black and white film photographer, and our discussions have included previsualization of the latent black and white image, something that I never really thought about. Growing up, black and white photography was the economical medium of choice, since all of my extra money went into buying bulk-packed 35mm film loaded into reusable cassettes, and printing only those images that I really liked, and whose expense I could justify. Back then, a little bit of money had to go a long way.

For me, digital photography unleashed a creative urge that lay dormant since the early 1980s. I was in the process of launching a second career, and as such set aside my cameras for lack of anything I was required to photograph. The need would emerge when I took responsibility for producing my school's tri-annual catalog of classes. I started working with color transparency film, creating slides that would be sent to a lithographer for conversion to the  cyan-magenta-yellow-black (CMYK) separations necessary to produce brochure covers in full color.

Eventually every aspect of the catalog was created digitally, and as the need for more detailed documentation increased, so did my inventory of digital cameras. Now, three years into my retirement, I welcome the chance to spend time with Shawn and discuss our shared artistic outlet from a purely recreational standpoint. Advances in digital camera technology have resulted in cameras that can effectively address the nuances of proper exposure, and post production software that help me to salvage images when I mess up. I shoot for myself now, free to indulge my fascination with color, something I could never afford to do when I worked with film.

Fall Has Arrived

This week, things came to a halt when I suffered a hard drive crash on my laptop. While I lost some (sentimentally) valuable documents, I had the good sense to back up nearly all of my 2019 and 2020 images. Unfortunately, I forgot to include some of my 2021 assignments, as few as they were, so I live in fear that somebody will need an image taken in February, incorrectly assuming that my organized persona is based on reality. I'm a slob. Ask any of my friends.

The closeup of the water droplets was taken on my early morning walk. I'm always surprised when I encounter evidence of water in our drought-parched state. The shot proved itself a real challenge due to the short shooting distance and the nature of shooting with a manual focus lens. Try as I did, I couldn't hold still long enough to insure that my plane of focus was exactly where I wanted it. Image after image proved less than critically sharp, so in desperation, I put the camera on 6 frames per second Continuous Exposure Mode, and fired a six-shot burst. In post processing, I magnified each image and chose the one I deemed sharpest. Not the greatest image I've ever made, but sharp enough for an $80.00 Chinese lens.

I'm always on the lookout for some odd reflection, and while this one, a rear view mirror of a scooter, shows a street sign restricting left turns on one of San Francisco's narrow streets. I thought it might be interesting to reverse the image so the reflection would be properly rendered. I find the image amusing, but not enough to hold my attention for long.

Welcome to  Autumn.