Edgy Sunday

Inspired by "The Photographer's Eye" by Michael Freeman, I decided to try something different today, a black and white picture. The beauty of black and white is that the viewer is removed slightly from the reality of the picture. Removing the color helps focus the viewers' attention on the shapes, light and overall mood. I was going for an edgy effect in the photo above.

Lazy Saturday

Pillowy

This picture is of mini marshmallows, which represents my day. I'm taking it slow and relaxing after multiple weekends of doing stuff. Also, I'm resting up for my first photography gig next Saturday. I'm covering a conference for ASCEND. It's non paying, but a great way to build my reputation and portfolio! Slowly, but surely I want to move more into this area. It won't happen overnight, but with small baby steps.

Riding da Bus

9x

I got off work early, so took the 9x bus. I prepared myself for the bus ride by putting on a poker face and wearing my backpack in front. That's the only way to survive in this city. Only the paranoid survive! There are just so many crazies walking around that you've got to protect yourself.

The first bus that came was somewhat full, but many disembarked, so it emptied out. I decided to board. I came to regret that pretty soon. As I got on, I smelled a whiff of dried urine. I thought it would pass, but it lingered. Then I saw another bus passenger next to me grimace and realized to my horror that the smell would not go away because it came from one of the other passengers! Since my nose is hyper sensitive when it comes to urine smells, I needed to get off the bus as soon as possible. The mere thought of having to endure that smell for the 20 minute ride home scared the heck out of me. I scrambled off the bus as fast as my feet could carry me and walked back to my original stop to wait for the next bus.

When the next bus came, I even had a seat, which was good. However, this bus had it's own annoyances. This time it wasn't dried urine smells. Instead, there was a woman with an obnoxious voice talking loudly to the bus driver the entire time. She was essentially the only person talking loudly on the bus. You could see the pain on the other passengers' faces as she droned on and on in her loud voice. She was just prattling on about things that didn't make much sense.

Seattle - Flying Monkeys

Flying Fritz

My sister and I have a couple traditions when we go traveling. One of them is to splurge on a nice diner style breakfast of waffles, pancakes or French toast. Generally we don't eat this stuff for breakfast, but when we're traveling, it's nice to be able to treat ourselves. Aside from this one luxury, we like to save money on our food, so we often go to supermarkets for dinner. In Seattle we went to Whole Foods, which is a very upscale supermarket with its headquarters in Austin, TX. People joke that this place should be called "Whole Paycheck" because it costs nearly an entire paycheck to buy groceries at this place and that's not very far from the truth. Whole Foods sells organic foods and there is a HUGE selection of goods.

Another one of my sister's traditions is to have her shoelaces go untied whenever we need to run or hurry to a location. Don't ask me why it always happens at the most inopportune moments. My tradition is that I usually have a poor sense of direction. I never seem to remember in which direction to head after I leave a building. Usually I end up heading the wrong way, so I can almost guarantee that if I head opposite of the direction that I think is right, I'll end up getting to my destination.

Seattle - People Watching

Dancing with Strangers

Seattle had some interesting people watching. One of my observations is that many people wore Northface clothing such as black jackets and vests, etc. I was wondering the whole time where Northface was headquartered, so I did some research. Apparently, 2 people gave birth to the Northface idea right here in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. (Yay for San Francisco!) Now they are in San Leandro, CA. The Seattle area, however, has spawned its own corporate conglomerates such as Boeing, Amazon.com, Nordstrom and Starbucks of course.

Another observation I made was that I saw a number of men wear kilts when I was in Seattle. Actually, they were not your normal Scottish plaid kilts. Instead they were utilikilts, favored by Goth types. It's an interesting fashion choice. Why would men want to wear skirts? I haven't worn one since I was in middle school thank goodness. I can't stand skirts and dresses because it makes getting in and out of cars so difficult.

One good place to people watch was the Northwest Folklife Festival that happened over Memorial Day weekend. The mix of people out and about was just amazing. You had young people, old people, people of different colors, etc. There were people giving away free hugs. I have no idea what that was all about. Why would I want a free hug from a total stranger?! Anyway, the festival featured performances and dancing from various cultures. The picture above portrays people dancing to Greek music I think. It was fascinating to see people dancing as a huge group. I don't know if these guys are part of a huge club or if they were just onlookers who got up and joined in the dancing.

Seattle - Personal Highlight

Seattle Public Library

The Seattle Public Library was my personal highlight of the trip because it gave me so much to work with from a photography perspective. There were lines, patterns, colors, shadows, etc. I was so excited (imagine that, me getting excited about something!) by what I saw that I could only describe it as being in photographic ecstasy. Everywhere I turned there was something interesting to capture. The light was perfect in the library - bright without being harsh. It was a very soft light. Then for the ultimate surprise, I happened to land on the 4th floor by accident; this floor was painted totally red! I took some interesting pictures here totally bathed in this primal color.

Aside: Now that I've been to Seattle, I want to see the film "Sleepless in Seattle" because I should now be able to recognize the various locations where they shot the film.

Seattle - The Emerald City

Piggy at Pike Place

Here's my Seattle experience in a nutshell -

Seattle is very similar to SF.
I like SF.
Therefore I like Seattle.

Piers, ferries, hills and organic farmer markets oh my! I did not realize how twin-like the Emerald City is to the City by the Bay. I spent the weekend exploring various neighborhoods and just got acquainted with the city. There is much more I missed though. For example, I really wanted to visit one neighborhood called Fremont that had quirky public art installations like a troll under a bridge. Because I did not have time to research Seattle's bus system, I did not make it up to Fremont. Maybe next time.

More on Seattle tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the picture of a pig at Pike Place Market - Seattle's most famous market.

Seattle

Ready or not, here I come!

That's a literal statement because I haven't really prepared for my weekend trip yet. Usually I like to plan sightseeing, but this time around, I'll wait until I get on the plane. Time has just been in very short supply this week. Almost every evening I've been working late. Seattle should be a nice little getaway.

The picture is of the Lonely Planet guide borrowed from the SF public library. I'm putting my tax dollars to use here. Might as well, I pay enough taxes to the government and should enjoy my privileges.

Must stop being so self-centered. It was somewhat scary how many times I used the word "I" in my entry today before it was edited.

Apologize

I'm too tired to blog today, so I will credit your account for one free blog entry, which will extend your subscription by one day.

Seriously, I need to drive again tomorrow down to the South Bay, so I need to save my eye power. Need to get some shuteye now! Ciao ciao

What a Trip!

Textures

This Memorial Day weekend I've got plans. I'm going to Seattle, Washington! Can't wait. Actually, I'm playing catch-up now because most people have visited Seattle already. For example, I told two of my coworkers that I will be going there and both of them had already been. Am I just behind the curve? I don't know.

One of the main reasons I travel is to broaden the mind and to take pictures of course! Traveling is a part of a well rounded education. Without it, you can't join in conversations and small talk. Now that I'm back in the United States, I'm trying to make it a point to travel more domestically. So far I've been to the following domestic US cities:

1. Boston
2. New York City
3. Atlanta (the "ATL") although it was for work only and I didn't get to see the city center, so not sure if it counts
4. San Jose, CA (for work - BTW, downtown San Jose is ugly)
5. New Orleans (when I was younger, so I don't remember anything really)
6. Orlando (for work related training and didn't get to see city center)
7. San Diego, CA (for work, but I did get to spend time seeing the sights. Very nice city and nice laid back people)
8. Los Angeles (for work, so saw downtown LA, which was deserted and some blocks looked sketchy)
9. Honolulu
10. Carmel by the Sea (one of my faves - so cute and clean!)
11. Monterey, CA (love the weather and the wildly beautiful Californian coast)

I think that's it.

My US/Canada domestic travel experiences wish list looks like this:
1. Washington DC
2. Vancouver, Canada
3. Denver, CO
4. Santa Fe, New Mexico or somewhere else in the Southwest
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Dallas or Austin, TX
8. Alaska somewhere
9. Go on a cruise somewhere
10. Savannah, GA

If you need inspiration for travel destinations, here's a hot tip - check out DailyCandy's travel edition. It's only for the cool kids like you & me.

Daredevils

Risky Business

This again was shot on Angel Island. What I like about this picture is the juxtaposition of the warning sign and the image of the man and little girl in the right side of the picture. It's very ambiguous and creates tension in the viewer's mind. Is the guy her dad or a stranger? You only see the back of her, but his face is slightly visible in profile. The picture encourages viewers to think of a story.

Desperados

View from the Top

A very irritating ad plays every morning on the Chinese radio station my mom listens to. It is a dialogue between two women speaking in Cantonese to one another. Here's a flavor of the dialogue:

Woman 1: "Wow, you're really dressed up today. What's the occasion?"
Woman 2: "Remember my niece from China? I'm going to her wedding banquet. She just came over from China recently and now she's already getting married and will have permanent residency now because I placed an ad in the Singtao newspaper."
Woman 1:"You know, my daughter she's 30 years old and doesn't even have a boyfriend. All she cares about is working."
Woman 2: "Well, then you should put a personals ad in the Singtao newspaper. It's really simple and it works."

This ad annoys me to no end because it puts ideas into my parents' heads. That's not a good thing. Maybe I should pay Singtao double their advertising revenues from this ad just to stop them from playing it multiple times each morning. ;-)

The picture above is the view from one of the many breathtaking vantage points on Angel Island. I'd highly recommend a little hiking excursion to any of visitors to SF if they have time to spare.

Angel Island - Heavenly Views

Angel Island Sign

Today I spent an afternoon hiking on Angel Island. I don't know why they call it Angel Island because for a while it was a detention camp for Chinese immigrants before they could get to San Francisco. For the detainees, it was probably more like devil island. Anyway, we didn't have time to visit the detention camp. Instead we hiked for close to 4 hours. My sore feet and knees are evidence of this.

Weatherwise, it was so hot this afternoon, but I was well equipped for the sun. My weapons of defense included a baseball cap, sunglasses, sunscreen and 2 bottles of water, one of them frozen. We went up the Sunset Trail and came down the Northridge Trail. It was funny because you could tell we were all city slickers and wouldn't last a day in the wilderness. We had to ask park rangers for directions twice.

Once we got up to the top though, the views were excellent. I could see the San Francisco skyline, the East Bay, Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. Also because the weather was so nice, many white boats dotted the blue waters. The hike was worth it because it was good exercise, I met a bunch of nice people and most importantly, the hike kept me away from my laptop, which is a good thing!

Obama Star Power

Trader Joe's

This is what Americans do on a Saturday morning - they go grocery shopping. Actually, this isn't any old grocery store, this is Trader Joe's, where they sell health conscious food, nice house brands and a huge selection of cereal. They try to be quirky and their employees are alternative too. They wear Hawaiian shirts as their uniform. Those artsy types, you know.

Anyway, away from the mundane ... we got some Obama star power in the region today. Michelle Obama was the commencement speaker at the UC Merced graduation. The students sent her hand made Valentines and urged her to speak at their commencement. This gesture moved her so much that she agreed to speak today. I think this was nice of her. Instead of speaking at a high powered school like Stanford or UC Berkeley, she instead decided to honor the little guys with her presence. Notice how there are many minorities in the picture with Michelle Obama. I like it when the underdog scores a win.

Strategy

S-Bahn

Today was crazy at work. Right around 10:30 I had three different people asking me to do different things. Wanting to please the maximum number of people, I worked through lunch to get something done in time so that I could start the next task. The first thing I tackled was a "little" Powerpoint request for changes to a proposal. Powerpoint for some reason always takes longer than people expect. By the way, I hate tables in Powerpoint! People, please just import them from Excel, which makes it easier to format!

By the way, about the picture - I really like the green color permeating the picture and the font used for the words "Unter den Linden". Sehr schoen! I sent the file to Costco for printing and will pick up tomorrow. I think I will invest in my own printer pretty soon. It's such a hassle to have to pick up prints and you never know how they will turn out.

Moonlighting

Why am I staying up until 11 PM to work on something that will not give me "credit" at work? That is the question.

I'm going to stop now and resume in the morning. The sooner I get this non-client work done, the faster I can move onto client work when it becomes available.

It's very hard these days not to let work dominate your whole life. Sometimes I think people let work become their sole purpose in life in order to fill a void. It becomes a type of addiction. All sorts of addictions come about because of deeper needs that are screaming to be met.

Little buddy

Fritzchen at the Laptop

I need to remember to bring Fritzchen along with me on my travels. Thus far I've been very forgetful. But no longer as I have resolved to add him to my packing list. As a result, each time I refer to that list, I will see him.

I don't think there have been any interesting current events lately in the news, so that I don't have any topics that get me worked up enough to blog about. My routine is just going to work, going home, sitting in front of my laptop wasting some time on Facebook (I need to limit this!) and if I'm good, dealing with my photo files. I have an ambitious task in mind. That task is to rename my photo files and to tag them with key words so that I can start developing a little photo library in Lightroom. Taking charge of my photography career and goals is better time spent than compared to Facebook. Shame on me!

Blast from the Past

Interior

I just got friended today on Facebook by a classmate from middle school, whom I haven't seen for almost 10 years! Facebook is insane. People are coming out of the woodwork left and right.

Continuing with my restaurant theme, one of my work colleagues went to eat at a unique Japanese restaurant in the Richmond District. It's called Tekka Sushi and is a hole in the wall. However, it sounds like this place is very popular because of the unique owner. The sushi chef has a set of 10 rules that the customers must abide by. He boogies to a Bee Gees DVD every night as he is making the sushi. Also, the restaurant has the feel of home because it only seats 10 people. While you are waiting in line for the restaurant to open, you start chatting with the other guests and get to know them.

I think the whole reason people flock to this place is due to its somewhat eccentric owner/sushi chef. He makes it an experience. I bet if I were to be as eccentric as this guy, I wouldn't be as successful. Just as a caveat, I haven't been to this place, so this is just hearsay.

Mi Dispiace

Tut mir leid, dass es heute keinen neuen Blog-Eintrag gibt. Ich bin muede von der Arbeit. Morgen versuche ich eine bessere Person zu sein. Ha ha

Love Letter

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Dear Lightroom,

I don't know how I lived my photographic life before you came along! You've made me a better person. Now I am more efficient whenever I edit and manage my photo files. You had me at import.

How do I love thee? Let me list the ways.

1. Upon import of my files, you let me rename them using custom file names so that I can keep them truly unique. Now that I'm taking pictures with two separate cameras, the camera's sequence numbers are no longer sufficient. The problem that arises is that there has been overlaps in the sequence numbers, which increases the risk that I will overwrite my old files with my new one. For example, my old Canon G6 took photo number 560 and named the file 560.jpg. Photo number 560 on my EOS 5D could also be named 560.jpg if that's how I export my photos. Lightroom lets me create unique names upon import.

2. You let me quickly create collections, add copyright watermarks and resize my photos

3. I can nondestructively modify my photos

Faithfully yours,
frankfurtsanfrancisco

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So I took advantage of San Francisco's free museum days and visited the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Although I'm not Jewish, I figured it would be good to get exposed to a different culture. From the outside, the metallic blue building material is quite the eye-catcher. See picture above.

In addition, I really wanted to see the interior of the Daniel Libeskind designed museum. See picture below. He did a good job integrating the building's original design with his new vision for the building.

Afterwards I met up with some folks at the Samovar Tea Lounge at Yerba Buena Gardens. I had one medium sized cup of masala chai tea that ultimately cost me $6, including tax and tip! That's way expensive. No wonder people have next to no savings here in America. For people who regularly eat out, it can truly add up and they could end up busting their budget if they even keep one! Thank goodness I have self-control.