I drove into San Francisco on a Sunday morning, intending to photograph the Palace of Fine Arts. But as I drove past the Civic Center, San Francisco City Hall caught my attention. It was front-lit by the rising sun at about 8 a.m. and positively glowed. So I changed plans, parked there, and shot [...]
I went into Oakland this past Sunday, more to get out of the house than with any specific photo plans. I drove downtown and began walking around the area of Broadway and 14th through 18th. I came across this young man painting a mural, talked to him for couple of minutes, then asked to take [...]
For six weeks now, it hasn't been possible to get out and do street photography, or really any kind of photography away from home. But a few days ago, a hiking trail near my house, which had been closed for weeks, was reopened. So, noticing photogenic cirrus clouds this morning, I walked part of the [...]
Since I can't get out and do any street photography, I've been using myself as the actor in story-telling composites. The most time-consuming part is coming up with a concept that's simple enough to be doable, but not so simple that it's dull. So here are three I did last week. BTW, thank goodness for [...]
When you're stuck at home, as we all are, and you can't go out and shoot people on the street—because there are no people on the street—and your wife begs off being your model, who ya gonna shoot? Yourself. That's your only option. So here are some selfies that I hope go beyond just selfies. [...]
A red filter on a camera shooting black and white film, or on a digital black and white camera, darkens blues dramatically. So shooting big, puffy white clouds against a blue sky makes for very dramatic black and white images. This is an athletic field near me. I used layers and masks in Photoshop to [...]
I had an "assignment" from a group of photographers I meet with to take three street portraits. I went to a couple of locations in the past few weeks, but didn't come away with any portraits I liked. In one case, I didn't get any at all. So I went to the Embarcadero in San [...]
Several guides for photographers that I read before going to Death Valley rank two or three locations ahead of the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes as photo subjects, including Badwater Basin and Zabriskie Point. But for someone like me, shooting in black and white and using only wide-angle and normal (50mm) lenses, the sand dunes were [...]
I got many images I liked from this march, mainly because I learned some helpful lessons from shooting previous marches: If you can get in the middle of the march and walk backwards, shooting people's faces, the photos have a lot more impact than ones you get standing on the sidelines. A bigger or brighter [...]
With no specific photo goal or subject in mind, I went to three towns on the shore of San Francisco Bay this weekend. Crockett, Martinez and Port Costa are all three fairly close together. Crockett and Port Costa are towns that time forgot, and seem stuck in time about 50 years ago. Martinez is small, [...]