Photocosm

Alcatraz: Sean Connery Had A Cabin Here

I made my first visit to Alcatraz Island last month.  The excursion was sponsored by my sister.  What a surprise, The Rock. I'd always assumed it was pretty much a tourist trap.  Or even worse, a tourist prison.  Not so.

For a photographer, the island is worth the time, and worth another visit.  Be prepared to be patient, though. You'll see something to photograph, but it's surrounded by visitors.  You'll compose a beautiful photo, admiring it through your viewfinder.  The image will convey the solitary magnificence of the island, but somebody in a red Nike windbreaker steals the scene to tie his sneakers.  Also, access to the island is quite limited, mostly for safety.  Roads and paths are closed or barricaded.  Makes you feel a bit like a prisoner, too.  You see something which would make a stunning image, but there's no way to reach it.

Before the visit, I was concerned about freedom of movement on the island.  Maybe they'd march us off the ferry, line us up, and make us follow the tour guide like a chain gang.  Not so.  The National Park Service employees there let you wander through the areas which are open.  They're around if you have questions, but they don't get in the way of your own self-guided tour.  You have the feeling of exploring the island at your own pace.  Of course, when you're done with your visit and ready to take the ferry back to San Francisco, they do make you get a signature from a federal parole officer.  That's only a formality, though. Slip 'em a fiver and you're on your way.

The beauty of the setting is outstanding.  Alcatraz Island gives you excellent views of the bay in all directions: San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin County, Angel Island, the East Bay, and the Bay Bridge.  There's always something going on.  The sky is a wonder.  If you get there early enough, you can watch the fog burn off into a blue sky.  You can watch clouds cover the Golden Gate, then drift over you, then float over to Berkeley -where they turn left.  The airliners approaching San Francisco International and Oakland International are low enough to appreciate.  There are oil tankers and ferries and sailboats on the bay. Swimmers, too.

To view the photos, click on the link under the Photo Albums heading.  To return here from the photo pages, click on the maxclarke.typepad banner at the top of the page.

If you've read this far, here's the story behind the headline for this post.  According to numerous news sources, Sean Connery actually did reside in a cabin at Alcatraz.  He had signed up for the movie, "The Rock," and did not want to make the trip from a hotel in San Francisco to Alcatraz -and then back- each day.  He insisted that the producers have a cabin built for him on Alcatraz so he could avoid the commute.  Connery got his cabin.  Of course, the word "cabin" means many things.  I think of a cabin in the woods, or maybe a Lincoln log cabin, or even Log Cabin Maple Syrup.  When Sean Connery says "cabin," I suppose he's thinking of the cabin in a Gulfstream private jet.  Or the cabin in the Disco Volante yacht.  Maybe a cabin that looks like a suite at the Fairmont.

 

Blossom Saturday and California Poppy Day

Here are a few photos of flowers that I've shot with my Canon A570 IS. They were all photographed in the East Bay, which is the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay. Which I guess would make San Francisco the West Bay. San Jose is in the South Bay, and the North Bay includes such towns as Tiburon and San Rafael.

Since I'm still evaluating the Canon, I see these shots as experiments. The only flowers I know for sure are the orange poppies, since the poppy is the official flower of California, nicknamed The Golden State. It's my favorite flower. When you see a field filled with orange poppies, it's like looking at a thousand suns on green stems.

Here's something I just discovered preparing this post. I just visited Wikipedia to learn a bit more about the poppy. Turns out that in California, April 6th of each year is designated as "California Poppy Day." Why should that mean anything to the loyal readers of this blog?  Without knowing anything about that, I bought my Canon digital camera on...April 6th.  Cool. And golden.

I photographed these poppies on a rainy day, which is why the flowers seem a bit subdued. I'll close out the post with the same field on a bright day.

Part Two - Photon Entanglement

In part one of Photon Entanglement, we were looking at my first digital photo. As a test last Friday, I had photographed a 16x20-inch print an arm's reach from the computer. It was the easiest shot I could take, now that I knew some of the basics for using my first digital camera. The 16x20 print was a black and white of the Golden Gate Bridge, shot from the vista point just north of the bridge. The Canon Powershot did its job in that test photo, and the image it produced was large and detailed. Satisfied with this, I took the camera on my drive the next morning to Marin County.

The photo you see here is the first daylight digital photo that I shot the morning after I bought the Canon Powershot.  At first, you might think I simply photographed my own photograph again. Nope. That is somebody else's photograph.

I saw this in San Anselmo on Saturday morning when I walked from my parking spot to a diner. It's hard to see, since I shot this through the window of an ice cream shop, but that image of the Golden Gate Bridge is nearly a duplicate of my own Golden Gate Bridge photo. The cropping is only a bit different, while the skies are quite different. The bridge in the ice cream shop is surrounded by mist, and only the north tower is visible. In my photo, there are clouds instead of mist, and both towers are visible. Aside from that, however, the odds are good that if you saw where that photographer stood to get the shot, and you saw where I stood to get my shot, we were only a few feet apart.

And that is why these two posts are titled Photon Entanglement.

Photon Entanglement - Part One

Happy Easter, everybody. I spent Sunday driving through the wild open spaces of Marin County, California, USA, as the credits used to say at the end of Star Wars movies.

I didn't realize how much things would change when I started this blog last week. Innocent little me. My photography has always been based upon film.  I've used different formats of film -35mm, 6x7, and 4x5. For those of you who don't know what those numbers mean, they show an increase in size. After using 35mm cameras, I upgraded to the medium format when I bought a Pentax 6x7 camera. Medium format film was several times larger than the 35mm frame. It meant you could make large poster-sized prints, and they'd still look sharp. Then, in 1988, I stepped into the world of the large format and bought a 4x5 view camera. The film was in sheets, and each sheet was about the size of a small paperback book cover. That's large enough to make prints the size of billboards. The size changed, but film was the constant factor.

That all changed for me on Friday, April 6th. I bought my first digital camera, a Canon A570 IS. It has been a joy to use all of these last...two days. Totally reliable these last...two days. It has 7 megapixels, and I'm impressed at the sharpness of the images. They don't match film, but I wanted something that would a) give me experience in digital photography and b) allow spontaneous photos, the kind I might like to post on the Internet.  The Canon is easy to use, takes great shots on the AUTO mode setting, and it didn't bust the budget. It'll be fine for the next year or two. Besides, the only way I'll replace one of my film single lens reflex cameras is with a digital SLR. About two years.

So, why the title? What's this post -part one- have to do with Photon Entanglement? Don't want to give away all the surprises, but it has to do with synchronicity. If you want your view of the world to shift a bit, do some research on photon entanglement or quantum entanglement.  Essentially, scientists have found a way to create two photons at the same time. When they separate these photons -sometimes by miles- the photons still appear to have a connection. If the scientists change the spin rate of one photon, the other is affected. I've read that Einstein or somebody called this "spooky action at a distance."  For people who have an interest in meditation and metaphysics, this is old news.

And what is the photo in this post?  That is my first digital photograph.  I skimmed the Canon guide, learned how to insert the batteries and turn the machine on, and then I needed to take a photo, any photo.   I pointed up from the computer chair at the photo you see. It's still in the wrapper, and taped to the cardboard, leaning against a window near my desk. It's a 16x20-inch print, one that will be featured in my solo show late this year -maybe early next year- at the Photolab Gallery in Berkeley. I clicked the button and the flash went off, and I got this image in a second. The flash was a bit intense for the center of the print, the plastic wrapper is highly reflective.  The image itself is the Golden Gate Bridge, shot from the Marin County side, facing San Francisco to the south. As Rodney Dangerfield said in Caddyshack, "On the good side."

Coming up later, Part Two of Photon Entanglement.

.

Welcome to my Photo Universe

Thanks for taking the time to visit.

This is my first blog, though I've had a website for years, maxclarke.com.  I built my website back when my computer was a PC.  The website design was done with Microsoft Front Page.  I've since replaced the PC with a Mac, which doesn't run Front Page.  Just as well.  Meanwhile, I've discovered what millions of people already know: why invest so much time and money in web design software, when blogs can pretty much give you the same features? This blog will accomplish many of the functions of the original website in presenting photographs and discussing photography.  However, the structure of the blog will allow more spontaneity.  I'm still devoted to film, so there will be that interval between taking the shot and posting it. That said, frequent visitors to my website will notice an improvement: new photographs.

Sunrise At Pier 7. The first photo in this blog is one I shot in San Francisco years ago.  A storm was clearing out over the San Francisco Bay.  The original print was fiber with selenium toning, 16x20 inches.  I had shot the scene with the grainiest 35mm film available back in the '90s, Kodak Recording Film. Sometimes, the sharpest film or the largest format isn't the best way to get a shot.  In this case, the grain communicated the density of the clouds very well.  Compared to what a large format photo would have revealed, the grain in this photo is the size of raindrops. There's also a full-frame version of this hanging in the permanent collection of Cantoo, a photo lab in Berkeley.  Kevin at Cantoo did a great job with that image and printed it on their Lightjet.

Welcome to my photo universe. Enjoy the light.