Photocosm

You Dance With The Light That Brung You

The latest storm system blew through here on Sunday, so now we're stuck with sunny days and chilly nights. I really like fog, though, it's my favorite photo weather, but you dance with the light that brung you.

We start with a view from the marina area of Tiburon. Angel Island is in the distance on the left, and San Francisco shows up on the right. What a great photo this could have been with fog. The boats would have disappeared mostly, Angel Island would have been lost in low clouds, San Francisco would have sunk out of mind, and that would have left us with a sharp photo of that chair.

I visited the lagoon at the Marin Civic Center because I remembered they had a tree that could block the sun and protect my delicate facial features.

A bit later, I practiced the old bedouin trick of turning away from the sun to avoid looking directly at it, and that's when I realized the seagulls had been watching me the entire time. They were so quiet and so still. No wonder they're considered the deadliest of raptors.

Walking Home

It was such a beautiful day, I walked home. If we get a string of beautiful days, though, I'll have to reconsider. My feet can only take so much beauty.

I passed the loading dock of a business. The employees had just unwrapped their presents from Presidents Day.  A little bit late for the presents to be showing up, it seemed, but maybe they got held up by the writers' strike. Somebody was holding up a Jimmy Carter toaster, and somebody else got a Richard Nixon dumbwaiter. I photographed the wrapping materials on the pavement. As I resumed walking home, somebody shouted out, "Don't you want to photograph the Ronald Reagan oxygen pillow?"

There was a lawn sale going on in Berkeley. Somebody had already bought the lawn, but there was still a fine collection of lawn chairs. Good to see they kept up with all the styles through the years.

I almost bought a few pots. Why not recycle something that's already been produced? Too many choices, though, couldn't make up my mind.

This wasn't a part of the lawn sale, but I saw a storage area with some layers of window panes that had broken. There was an attractive abstract quality to the glass. A pane of glass is a window, but a broken pane is this thing here.

Red Sky In Morning, Golfers Stay Home

You pay for a sunrise this beautiful. The old aphorism applied here again, "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." These leading edge clouds were made red and orange before the sunrise, and they were followed by the weather front that brought us the winds and the rain. I photographed this near the Marine Layer Home For Retired Sailors & News Anchors.

California humor. An art supply store in San Anselmo offered discounts as part of their pre-earthquake sale. I could write more, but it's enough to say there is a connection between rain and earthquakes, even if these humorists weren't thinking along those lines.

Clouds passed Tiburon and Belvedere across the San Francisco Bay.

The rain was falling near the Larkspur ferry terminal by 10 am, Mount Tamalpais was previously covered at the top by a layer of white clouds. You can see the top here.

The winds made the airports change the arrival patterns for the airliners. This big jet had to fly over Berkeley to land at San Francisco International.

In preparation for the high winds expected for this storm, a white fence went ahead and leaned over. I guess Home Depot is starting to sell smart fences. They're made in France by Maginot.

It's George Washington's Birthday

Birds get together early in the morning at the Northgate Safeway in San Rafael.

A seagull buzzes the sparrows as it heads for the roof of the Safeway.

There's a big piece of rock in downtown Mill Valley near Peet's, it looks like a block cut from a quarry. Somebody had put a couple of pink flowers into a bit of water from the rain last night.

"Good morning, dear sir, could you please supplement my meager diet with a generous gift of nutritious pastry products?" 

I had just pulled over to the curb in Ross. This dog instantly arrived and gave its best smile, "As you can see, wonderful human, one of the best humans I have seen, my owners at this bicycle shop do not understand my special dietary needs. They want me to hunt rats, but I am not a cat. I tried to chase a rat but I ran into a ten-speed bike. If you will give me a morsel of that ham-and-cheese croissant, I promise to share with you all the rats I ever catch."

What could I do? It was a heartbreaking plea. I reached into my wallet and gave the dog a dollar.

Help Me, Obi Neon, You're My Only Hope

A few weeks ago, I noticed a red crane lift near the marquee of the Rafael Theater in San Rafael. Some sort of maintenance or repair, no doubt, preparation for the telecast of the Oscars this Sunday. The California Film Institute hosts Oscar Night America each year at the Rafael Theater. It's a big deal, they show the Oscars telecast on a big screen, and the silent auction supports the educational work of the Institute. Click here for their site.

Today, the Service One guys were back to install some neon lights. Guess he's doing some preparation here, making sure the connections are ready. I know what he's thinking up there, "I sure picked the wrong day to give up cough syrup."

Here's a view from the front. What a great piece of design, the Rafael Theater front. Beautiful geometry, and the lights aren't even on.

Here they are, ready for liftoff. They remind me of a lightsaber.

And there he goes, lifting a piece of blue neon from the street to the marquee for installation. Looks a lot more like a lightsaber here, doesn't it?

A bird flies over 4th Street to the roof of the theater.

The last shot before I had to leave for Novato. Obi Neon approaches the section where he'll install the blue tube, which actually contains argon gas.

June in February

We're back into good weather, there's a high pressure system over Northern California that keeps the bad weather away. Some of the mornings bring clouds, but they're burning off quickly. Here's a shot from Mill Valley, where the blackbirds/crows own the sky. One bird sat in the bare tree and another flew over my left shoulder just before I clicked the shutter.

Light fog hovers over Nicasio Reservoir. The vegetation looks like autumn a bit, but that's because the rains have stopped and the greens are drying into brown.

We had decent fog near Skywalker Ranch. It felt just like early summer, June or July, when the fog parks over the California coast.

The fog lifted early here, but it's at a lower elevation than Skywalker Ranch and the hills northwest of San Rafael.

The sunlight in Fairfax hit a piece of glass and projected this light circle shape onto a wall near Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Finally, I was walking through Berkeley and noticed somebody had carved the phrase "ODE TO JOY" into the sidewalk. It appeared to be an obvious reference to Beethoven's 9th symphony and its 4th movement.

The setting makes this interesting, though, ODE TO JOY was on the sidewalk a few feet away from the corner of the Fantasy building, a Bay Area landmark. This is where Fantasy Records used to be, but they've been purchased by a Hollywood company and merged into the Concord Music Group. I believe the studios are still used, though, and they've recorded some great names. Fantasy is best known for Credence Clearwater Revival, but Carlos Santana and Green Day are supposed to have recorded here.

The Southing Sun

There is the sunrise and there's the sunset, and in between there is the southing. That's the phrase James Joyce used in Ulysses, "the southing sun." I just heard it on an audiobook of the unabridged Ulysses. It's 27 hours long. I would have read the book but it takes too long.

I shot this looking south from Tiburon. An airliner contrail seems to hover over San Francisco. The dark section on the left is part of Angel Island, the good side.

Here's a boardwalk in Tiburon. It's a bit slow right now, not many visitors on a Tuesday, that center shadow line was moving faster than the tourist traffic. It'll pick up, though, especially with the upcoming Tiburon International Film Festival. Moviegoers will be standing on this very boardwalk in March, patiently waiting for the ferry. The ferry will take them to the portable bathrooms. The bathrooms will be on Angel Island.

Here's a view of the southern sun through a lamp on Solano Avenue in Berkeley. There's a contrail to the right. I'd just walked out of a movie at the Albany Twin theater when I shot this, but in the good way you walk out, happy for the experience.

I saw The Band's Visit, an excellent little movie from Israel. The movie was only 87 minutes long, so you can't call it an epic. It was part of the subscription screening service of Talk Direct. Most everybody liked the movie a lot, lots of laughs. I rated it Excellent, but I got in for free. The movie is about a police orchestra from Egypt and their visit to Israel. They are left on their own when nobody picks them up at the airport. 

The Band's Visit would have been the Israeli entry to the Oscars in the foreign film category, but it had too much English. Sounds like a bad joke, but I understand that's what happened. Mark Berger of UC Berkeley did a fine job moderating the discussion afterwards. The movie was a bit like one of my favorites, Local Hero, especially regarding an outside telephone which is vital to some of the locals and the visitors.

And now for something on the strange side. When I returned home, I discovered that my telephone line had died. The phone works fine, the message machine works fine, but the line has gone bad. Time to join the rest of civilization and buy a cell phone, I figure, ATT has never been motivated to fix the telephone wiring around the building. They're building for the future, you know, and besides, they were busy hosting that tournament down in Pebble Beach last week.

And we wrap up with a thin white rainbow. I don't know the details, but all the white rainbows I've seen have been around fog. Maybe the refracted light that would show the colors of the rainbow is in turn refracted back into white light. For those who find a regular rainbow tedious, the white rainbow is a refreshing change.

Big Brother On Broadway

This is 19 Broadway, in Fairfax, one of the Bay Area's most important venues for live music. It doesn't look like much because of that red beer cup in the gutter out front, but it's normally very clean, and they are universally admired for their Tiki Bar.  Here's their website: 19 Broadway.

Saturday night on the 16th, Big Brother and the Holding Company are going to blow out the tiki torches. Their show last year at 19 Broadway was a big hit, so drop by if you want to see one of the great rock bands of the United States. Click here to know more about Big Brother: BBHC. The eye-catching poster was designed by Clark Walker, click here for his website: clarkwalker.net.

Blue and Fire Engine Yellow

Big clouds hang over the San Francisco Bay. What Rembrandt could have done with the place. The sky seems so much bigger over water.

The Bay Link Ferry passes by Angel Island on the way to San Francisco. It's something like a 55-minute ride from Vallejo to SF, but the Bay Link ferry often beats the commute drive on I-80.

The rains have brought early results, the Fire Engine Flowers are in bloom along the back roads of Marin County.

Another view of the yellow field.

And back on the streets, a thing of beauty, the Aston Martin Vantage. This is considered the affordable Aston Martin, someplace near $100,000. I caught it a bit after sunrise in San Rafael. I've heard if this owner drives his Vantage during regular daylight hours, his insurance rates go up because of the traffic. Stop by a Safeway in the middle of the night and you'll see the lot filled with exoticars. It's to keep their insurance rates down.

CAVU in the Morning

There's a park not far from the Larkspur ferry terminal, and that's where I saw the sunrise. It's good to have clear skies again, ceiling and visibility unlimited. Now my shoes will dry out.

There's a mixture of soft blue and soft orange which seems to be a new color. I spotted it decades ago near the beaches around Santa Barbara, and there's a bit of it here.

Here's an example of the kind of weather we've had this winter. The recent winds picked up a fence outside a construction project in Emeryville, then left it standing.

You know the good weather is back when the exoticars return. This was parked outside a bank in San Rafael.  I'm not sure what Ferrari model we're looking at, but it makes that red awning stand out. The red curb, too.