I've never seen this before, so it caught me off-guard....kinda funny, actually.....

not a good day for the tourists  

Some Rails from San Francisco....rails  and   more rails .

 

(shot with a Nikon D300 and a Lensbaby 3G selective-focus lens)) 

 

 Long time no see...I don't have anything for the challenge, but I'm hoping this story works and gets posted....new system takes a little bit of getting used to.....

 

Anyhow, these are from a street fair that took place in San Francisco over the weekend.  It's an annual event called the "How Weird Street Faire".  People attending are encouraged to come in costume and, this being San Francisco, you see all sorts of costumes.  I have plenty of color images, but some of them worked best in black and white.  My intent was to make them gritty and contrasty and 'street'.  

  

 

 

It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to do any street shooting.  This was actually kinda fun. 

ps.  where is the preview button in this new format? 

 smiling for the camera 

I can do amazing things with a hula-hoop

drama under a bridge

perfectly posed

sharing a secret

Okay, I see how this works now....I was just dragging and dropping the images.     

 

Nestled between the high rises at Milson's Point and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, there is an amazing little amusement park called Luna Park.

(I've been to Sydney a number of times in the past few years, but it's always been in either June or July, which is Wintertime in Australia, and the park has always been closed.  This time, I timed my visit for December and I finally got an opportunity to wander around the park.)

Opened in 1935, Luna Park was modeled after the grandaddy of all amusement parks, Coney Island in NYC.  The towers of the entrance gates are designed to resemble the art deco style of New York's Chrysler Building.  Between the Towers hangs The Face  which was modeled after the traditional fairy tale character 'Old King Cole'.  

Although it's gone thru several renovations and is no longer as large as it used to be, the midway is still a pretty interesting place to hang out, take your chances and try your luck at winning a prize (and people watch on a sunny weekend).  

The end of the midway brings you here, where imitation really IS the sincerest form of flattery....

a last look back towards the entrance makes me glad I braved the raindrops and finally made a visit to this place.

And Pablo, even though the 'real' Coney Island may one day fade away, take comfort in the fact that it's memory will live on forever, halfway across the world in Sydney, Australia.

some images from my travels in Asia this past Fall....not really 'left-overs', but just one-off shots that I liked that weren't part of a series...

From Hong Kong:
TsimShaTsui clock tower
Star Ferry to Central
the last junk in the Harbour
multi-use building

From Australia:
2 Dec 2007 sunrise
4 Dec 2007 sunset

I have been having all sorts of problems with posting lately, so fingers crossed,  I hope this works...

During my last trip to Hong Kong I spent some time wandering around a Cantonese Opera festival on the waterfront in Kowloon.  

Unfortunately, most everything that was going on was happening in Cantonese (the Chinese language spoken in Hong Kong) so about all I could do was wander around, watch and take photos... There were lots of displays explaining the stage sets, the costumes and the props, as well and a number of open-air opera performances, which were really well done.

kids at the opera  - these guys were performers on break

And these were shot during one of the performances, after a very nice elderly gentleman with an ancient film Leica camera made room for me to shoot form the side of the stage
performance1
performance2
performance3
performance4

These guys move around the stage a lot while they are performing and getting sharp shots was definitely a challenge. The audience moves around quite a bit, too, so I had to do some creative vignetting in 3 in order to hide the side of someone's head.  All in all, though, I think they turned out well and it was a really interesting show to watch.

Just one

Taken behind the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on New Year's Day.  

I liked the detail in the vines on the tree and the late afternoon sunlight filtering down thru the branches....

I love my lensbaby...I am having so much fun with it...now that I finally figured out how to focus it where I want it....it may be the only lens I put on my D200 for a while...

It stopped raining, the winds died down  and the sun sort of came out for about half an hour yesterday, so I went out to the backyard to experiment.  Here are some of the keepers from the past few days...

laundry
hanging in there
birdcare
lucky
old
broken windows

But I promise, after this, no more lensbaby shots for a while..

another lensbaby 3G image...

the future is uncertain

and probably not everyone's cup of tea.

image 1463
Taken with a lensbaby 3G and then manipulated in Photoshop

image 293821
Taken with a macro lens and then manipulated in Photoshop

Too much time on my hands?  Maybe.  But I've also seen some amazing artistic stuff done with Photoshop and I'd like to learn how to do it too, so these are some of my first attempts.

PS...Happy New Year everyone...

When all else fails and you live in San Francisco, there is always the Golden Gate Bridge .  

On Christmas Day, I figured I'd take a camera and go out for a drive, because everyone would be home eating dinner and opening presents, so I'd have the place all to myself, right?

Wrong.  So wrong.  The beaches were so crowded that there was no parking anywhere.  Golden Gate Park was packed.  People all over the place.  Course, it didn't help that the weather was sunny and about 60 degrees....

But I swear, half the people in this town must have gotten digital cameras for Christmas and each and every single one of them was out using them on Christmas afternoon.

So I finally found a little spot in the Presidio with a nice view and got to try out MY new camera and lens (a 4/3rds Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 and a Leica 14-50mm f2.8-3.5 lens).

Here are a few shots:
marin headlands
more golden gate bridge

This lens is so sweet.  I think it and I are going to have a nice happy relationship, hopefully for a long time to come.  Unfortunately, it's been raining since Dec 26th...

christmas calm on the pacific ocean

Hope you all had a wonderful day...

It's been a while since I've had any significant time to devote to photography.  But I have the next week or so off, so I decided to walk around the neighborhood today and look for signs of Christmas. I did not have a lot of luck.

First off, we have no snow.  We haven't had snow in San Francisco in about 100 years.  Secondly, it was almost 60 degrees  and sunny today.  Not very Christmas-like weather.  

And then there are these other problems to deal with:
this is not a partridge in a pear tree

not suitable for decorating

where would we plug in the lights?

However, despite all these logistical 'challenges', Santa still manages to figure it out and come in for a landing anyhow ... I just hope he remembers to bring his sunglasses this year.

(and my apologies to any one of you who are currently spending Christmas eve in a blizzard.)

BONUS: Merry Christmas from the cat Bah Humbug...

Happy Holidays, everyone...

Random stuff I saw while wandering around Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island.....

too many floors to count
another trolley car
curves
indoor market
outdoor street market
snacks on the street
taxi anyone?

One of the advantages to staying in one place for more than a few days is that after a while you fall into a routine and the 'newness' starts to wear off, so I find myself noticing more of the little everyday things happening around me, instead of just looking at the place with the eyes of a tourist. (I was in HK for 15 days this time and I've been there 5 or 6 times before, so I've gotten to know parts of it pretty well).

Sometimes the ordinary, everyday stuff makes better images...
 

leave to go home, that is...

14.5 hour plane ride tomorrow back to San Francisco...I leave Sydney at 4 PM on Wednesday and arrive in SF at 11:30 AM on the same day.  It's always fun to live thru the same day twice (happens every time I fly home from Asia and cross the International Date Line - I loose a day on the way over and gain it back on the way home - still weird, though...) No more traveling for a while, I hope.

So, in my quest for a decent shot of the Opera House, I head into the City with camera bag in hand, hop on the train to Circular Quay (the harbor area)and wander around till I find the perfect vantage point....and there was a boat blocking my shot..... a very large boat, which didn't appear to be moving anytime soon.

So I took the shot anyhow...what do you think ?

(See you in a couple of days, after I get the jet lag under control)