Shooting San Francisco

"Not much Dog, what's up wid you?!"

More blur in Chinatown

Toilet seat paper dispenser - Wild Side West, Bernal Heights

Wolf Parade @ The Fillmore

Joseph Arthur solo acoustic at the Great American Music Hall

Christo Columbus looking out over North Beach above the Filbert steps.

Two girls on wall - Lower Height

Two girls walk by wall - 24th and Harrison - The Mission District

Lookie Lou Laundry - Chinatown

Fish-eyein' in downtown SF

Recent scenes from our fair city by the Bay. Finally gallery from this past 3 weeks of shooting for RG coming next week. Here's some add'l images from late last fall.

* thanks Senatra and Spears for the companionship to which these pics were made.

Scenes from Chinatown

Fernet What?

OK - that's great that SF thinks its the Fernet capitol, which its not - Buenos Aires is the Fernet Capitol, and probably some places I've never been to in Italy - but the green shit or menta, espanol for MENTHOL (mint)?! THAT is SF's best kept secret?! Let's keep it that way... sheesh.

And thanks Pablo Rivas for bringing back the old taste on your recent SF visit. For those of you who have never truly experienced the true BA Fernet experience, it's always to be mixed with Coca Cola - precisely 45-40% Fernet and the rest is Coke, and then lots of ice (and always well carbonated Coke, never from a tap gun or any other flat or watered down source) to give it that nice foamy brown head. In some strange ways it's almost like a root beer float.

Top of the Rio & Good Night Las Vegas

Thanks Paula Glaser for the loaner 15mm f/2.8 lens (above) and to Danny Palmerlee (aka Travel Burro) for the hour long Adobe Lightroom session on the phone, specifically on color conversion exports in Lightroom*. Who the hell still uses RGB 1998?! sRGB is the ONLY way to export! Tommy and Ethan... where R U! Now to redo my DWF document for 20008 - to infinity and beyond. There's a whole slew of folks to thank for this past 12 days shooting in Las Vegas, including both of my younger sisters Leslie and Kristie.

* Up until now I've been batch exporting pics to this blog (see previous posts from Vegas below) with very flat colors. DP finally explained the difference between the older RGB 1998 output and newer color-for-web settings, namely sRGB. FINALLY!

Playboy's Miss Janruay - The Bank Club @ Bellagio

They turned the snow machine on just for the two of us to make these pictures. "Can I put on some lip gloss?" was all that Dusty asked of me. Sure honey, knock yourself out.

Outside of the Venetian

Looking towards the Fashion Show Mall. Yes, they have regularly scheduled fashion shows every hour, on the hour in the mall.

Planet Hollywood Casino

(how's that for an original title for this post)

Overview of the PH Casino from the upstairs 'celeb' balcony. It's amazing how tourists can now pretty much shoot anything, anywhere at anytime. I need massive amounts of permissions and assistance, and not just with the photos. Tamar who does PR there was helpful in walking me around to get these shots. Thanks!

Habitrail for Humans

This is the entrance to Bally's Casino and Hotel where I've been staying for the past week. It's amazing how un-human one can start to feel like a hamster in this maze of flashing lights, white noise turned up to eleven and the constant ding, ding, ding of the casinos.

Room with a View

View from my window at Bally's - Las Vegas, Nevada

Flying High in Style

When MT emailed me end of day Friday I was exhausted, just wrapping up my first closed deals at work, finally. He needed to know immediately, did I want to take the open seat on Lisa's business charter flight down and back to LA on Saturday - YES or NO?? Business class IS all that, just ask anyone that has flown more than 6 hours up front on a commercial airliner. But I'd never flown on a private charter jet before.
"I'm in!!!" I quickly replied. "What kind of aircraft is it?" I added.

Our good friend Lisa Dybal is one of two on call pilots for the planes owner. She was flying down to Southern California to pick up some of the owners relatives to bring them up to the Bay Area for the day and had some space on the down and return legs.

"Dude - I am not shittin' you ... Italian turbo prop," was his answer awaiting me when I got home to pack and run out the door. Turns out that the Piaggio Avanti II is the world's fastest turbo prop business class airplane cruising at 25,000 feet above the earth at about 400 mph.


Reading Private Jet Life magazine on the flight down, Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith who is featured on the front cover, talks about his love for charter jet flying. It's contagious. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves but all I can say is - OMG!!!

See - Do - Hear - Think

Things I've seen, done, heard or thought about in the past few weeks

• Cleaned the fish bowl for my black and blue beta fish at work who's name is Rick James (thanks Metricken & Kay)
  
• Ran close to three miles, three times per week for the past 3 months regularly
  
• Watched the LA Lakers take down San Antonio in the final minutes in game one of some playoffs with MT
• Finished a final cut of Los Toros Films 'One Armed Bartender' with David Fortner
  
• Got my next travel photography assignment for RG - (TBA, contract pending)
• Played four sets of tennis for the first time in more than three years up in San Rafael
  
• Ate some expensive tacos at the newly remodeled El Toro taqueria en El Mision, the same El Toro @ 17th and Valencia that gave me one of my very first taco experiences in SF
• I also ate a peanut butter and mayo sandwich - yep, you read right!
• Edited some old FILM in the storage box archives... cutting and sleeving of old negatives (which should really be on my list of things NOT to do... but since I'm oh so nostalgic... )
• Answered my phone more times than I made outgoing calls (today @ least)
• Canceled last minute on a camping trip to the Modoc Lava Beds up on the Oregon border. The trip has now (un) officially been postponed due to RAIN!
  
• Speaking of rain and photography, here are a couple of totally random shots from last year in Costa Rica while shooting on assignment for RG. I think it rained all but two days for the enitre 4 weeks I was there.
  

please note: all photographs posted above are resized copies from the original camera RAW CR2 Canon file and have had no adjustments made to them. you can see the whites are pretty hot and blown out as well as very weak contrast and flat color. most of that has to do with lighting conditions but also the need to be properly managed in Adobe Lightroom before they can be printed.

Berkeley, Bread and Blood

The price of sandwiches at the Westside Cafe across the street from work in West Berkeley, specifically the basic turkey on homemade marble swirl bread, suddenly rose $0.75 today. Up until now it had been what I considered to be a pretty good Bay Area value at $5 a person. Now, at a whopping $5.75 por cabeza, I'm not so sure. It's still not a bad deal as far as lopped off, no frill standards go and healthy Bay Area sandwiches are definitely not cheap, not anymore.

"So... you guys raised your sandwich prices?" I asked the clerk behind the register.

"Dude... the price of flour like doubled over the past two months. It's not the actual flour but the cost of getting it here," the young pudgy faced counterman told me in semi-confidence and partial disgust.

My immediate thought was Argentina and their struggle against hyper inflation and prohibitively exorbitant ever-increasing food prices in those months before the crash in December of 2001. Pictures of young men, women and children - entire families - commandeering giant dump trucks filled with scrap meat and animal carcasses desperately searching for any and every last salvageable piece of meat, quickly entered my mind.

We're going down, just like what happened in Argentina and no one's looking, no one's watching,.. no one paying attention. That lonesome road and the price we pay for gas and bread.

* picture above brought to my attention by Cal Santos - Thai artist Kittiwat Unarrom and his gruesomely creative bread sculptures

Pura Vida en La Bahia de San Francisco

Here's a brief synopsis for all you budding weather fans and forecasters out there.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY WIND ARCHIVES

unfortunately this graphic didn't stay on my blog. just picture a map of the golden gate bridge with a giant red arrow indicating strong steady winds greater than 25 knots per hour.

SITE MAP Francis L. Ludwig Observed Winds for 5/4/2008 1400 PST

Look at Most Recent Model Output		Click on the map to get a precise reading
	January February March April May June July August September October November December 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 , 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 A.M. P.M. PST Model Observations

Wind speeds are in knots. Arrow size indicates exact speed, color gives approximate speed.
All speeds are for the wind at 10 meters above the surface elevation.

Note: See the big red arrow above?! That's over 25 nautical miles per hour (just under 30mph) and that's the baseline. Now, try sailing a 29' Ericson from Sausalito to just South of Jack London Square in Oakland - out towards Alcatraz, past San Francisco in front of Treasure Island, steady swells the entire time to your back and then under the Bay Bridge and into the safety of the Oakland estuary in the above pictured scenario.

The National Weather Service still has its small craft advisory up with a gale force wind warning from Point Arena to Point Conception in the outer waters.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

 PZZ530-051130-
/O.CON.KMTR.SC.Y.0043.000000T0000Z-080505T0700Z/
/O.EXB.KMTR.SC.Y.0043.080505T1900Z-080506T0600Z/
SAN FRANCISCO SAN PABLO SUISUN BAY AND THE WEST DELTA-
821 PM PDT SUN MAY 4 2008

...SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT PDT
TONIGHT...
...SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH
MONDAY EVENING...

.TONIGHT...SW WINDS 15 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 30 KT...DECREASING TO
10 TO 20 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT.
.MON...SW WINDS 5 TO 15 KT...INCREASING TO 15 TO 30 KT IN THE
AFTERNOON.
.MON NIGHT...SW WINDS 15 TO 30 KT...DECREASING TO 10 TO 20 KT BY
MIDNIGHT.
.TUE...SW WINDS 5 TO 15 KT.
.TUE NIGHT...W WINDS 10 TO 20 KT. PATCHY FOG.
.WED...W WINDS 5 TO 15 KT. PATCHY FOG.
.THU...SW WINDS 5 TO 10 KT...BECOMING W 10 TO 15 KT. PATCHY FOG.
.FRI...SW WINDS 5 TO 10 KT...BECOMING W 10 TO 15 KT.

Cap'n Super Dave piloted the Res Ipsa right through like there was no tomorrow. And there was a couple of times where tomorrow did run across my brain, especially when we saw this as we were leaving the Sausalito channel.

Click on the pic above to see that it is not a tiny sailboat nor is it a larger sailboat underneath a swell. It is in fact the advisory the Coast Guard posted all day long about a sunken vessel in the Sausalito straight. No wonder we didn't see many boats out today.

May Day... MAY DAY!

Joy to all of my international brothers and sisters who are actually WORKING today as opposed to the rest of the world that has this glorious day - directly between the summer and winter solstice - OFF. Power to the workers... y los pobres tambien.

No Blood For Oil

(taken in London in 2005 - one of my favorite stencils ever... mayb it'll be my next tatoo)

Is the tank half empty?

Not sure what to say but wanted to say something. Here in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, gas is now more than $4.00 per gallon. That's cheap compared to what most Europeans pay... in many cases, upwards of $10 per gallon once the math is converted to liters and to Euros (no idea what they pay in Japan or China). I currently don't own a car for the first time in my California life, which is actually a blessing in disguise, especially when it comes time to pay the pumpman... or woman or bullet protected attendant. Instead, I use public transportation. Today the black bus driver told me quick and frankly, "machine don't accept paper money, just go on." It was the second time this month that I got a free ride, saving me the $1.75 per ride fee to work. Time to get back on the bike .

(Note: Meanwhile, Exxon continues to post record profits, something I mentioned awhile back on this wee blog.)

Furenzu = Fun with Friends

Good food and good times with your friends is what Restaurant Furenzu is all about. If you're not familiar with the restaurant and their 'New Wave' Asian tapas, here's a review I wrote on Yelp. For those of you that haven't yet seen the news plastered across the media, the restaurant right across the street from me on Adeline at 39th here in Emeryville was robbed at gun point two night ago and most of the patrons as well as Cynthia and Simon had all their cash taken.
As a big fan of the restaurant and as an eye-witness to the crime - yep, I was there with no cash in my wallet - I want to publicly thank Simon the manager who took the brunt of the abuse but kept his cool throughout the entire ordeal, which seemed like an eternity even though it was probably not even five minutes.

After the gunman realized that there was not more than $40 in the cash box, he repeatedly told Simon that he was going to shoot him while his cowardly accomplice sheepishly went around collecting the all-too-ready cash in hand from the stunned patrons. Then the gunman took Simon into the kitchen with the gun pointed at his head shouting, "Nigga, I'm gonna fucking shoot you right now unless you give me the money!" Simon calmly answered again and again that there was no safe and no more money.

Returning into the dining room, the gunman made Simon lay down on the floor with the pistol pointed directly at the back of his head, repeating that he was going to shoot him and then the tow thugs left. Thanks again Simon for keeping calm while your life was at risk, setting the tone for the rest of us, letting us know that we were safe because of your cool-headed poker-like rock steady nerves. You the man!

KC BBQ on San Pablo Avenue

It's SOO the real thing...

Bay Bridge (revised)

American Easter Bunny

The Bay Bridge

Driving and photographing continues to be one of my favorite pastimes, especially westbound on the Bay Bridge heading into the city.

Lee Friedlander @ the SF MOMA

OK - besides Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, the two modern fathers of 'street photography', Lee Freidlander is my third and most significant influence. For those of you in the SF Bay area, do check out his whopping 400+ print show at the MOMA. Gary and I made our way down there yesterday evening to pay our respects and charge our photo batteries so to speak. Makes me realize why I am so driven and inspired to continually shoot. Special thanks to Alan Nomura, my photo mentor, for introducing me to Friedlander and for being such a great friend, teacher and confidant. You the man!
NOTE: The bottom middle nude is an early shot of the material girl herself circa 1979. I knew she was in this series from one of his books but couldn't remember which one. Gary recognized her first, "you can tell by the arm pits."

Que Viva Mexico!

Mexican futból fan outside of the Oakland Coliseum rooting for Mexico in their friendly versus the Australian Olympic team. Final score 1-1 tie.

Street Stencil in SF's Pan Handle

This caught my attention while walking home from an Obama Texas Phone Party with Marina.