Photocosm

Big Eye

.
I was at the office in the room where I clean my fishing lures and debating trophies, all by my lonesome, when a voice rang out from the office next door. A woman shouted to me, "Watson! Come here! I need you!"  I've heard that before. I hurried to the office, where the woman was all by herself. The air was filled by a menacing buzzing sound as she pointed to the corner by her computer. She wasn't in a panic, but she was quite bothered by the creature in the corner, "What is THAT?"
.
I rushed to get my digital camera and rushed back. What I wanted to tell her was, "This is what I've always wanted to photograph ever since I bought this camera!"  Instead, I told her not to worry, it wasn't a threat at all.
.
It was a beautiful dragonfly. How it got past security I don't know, time to cancel that contract with Blackwater Insect Control.  I jammed the viewfinder against my eye and tried to keep up. The dragonfly flew erratically everywhere, but mostly around the overhead lights and the windows.  Its buzzing was unnerving, it sounded like those drone robots in The Matrix movies. I got a shot as it hovered near the overhead light in the center of the office.
.
That was my first photo of a dragonfly. I thought the hummingbird was a tough photo, but the dragonfly makes the hummingbird look sluggish. It was all over the map. Dragonflies have always been the ultimate challenge for me, now that I own a digital camera. I've admired them all the time at gardens in the Bay Area, but they move too fast. They're always on the way somewhere, they never seem to arrive and rest.  Now, this one was trapped. It was distracted by the artificial light, when what it needed was a fast exit to the sunlight.
.

I got another shot. This was great, like finally getting a shot of a UFO. The dragonfly is an amazing creature, they have been studied by aviation companies, maybe also the US Air Force, because of their ability to fly so well. This one couldn't get enough of the florescent bank.

.

The dragonfly darted across the office and found a way to escape. Wrong way, Big Eye. The window blocked it, but I got a good shot. Look at the reflection in the window, you can see almost all the dragonfly in the main photo and in the reflection.

.
Here's the closeup of the dragonfly.  I shot this the second or third time it flew to the window.  It has two compound eyes, and each eye has thousands of lenslets, or whatever they call the microlenses. People involved in optics for cameras are now studying the compound lens design for its applicability to their work.

.

Summer Doldrums

.

We had a sunrise recently in Marin County, but it never happened if nobody was awake to see it. This crow was circling its favorite trees at Town Center, but it headed off toward McDonald's for the 99-cent menu.

.
A young sailboat skipper brings her small training boat back to the marina in Tiburon. Good for her. It all seems quite charming and cute and beautiful, but sailing on the San Francisco Bay is challenging. To begin with, the water is cold enough to incapacitate somebody who falls in, and the tides can be tough a couple of times each day. When the water flows through the Golden Gate as the tides change, that is the greatest flow of water in the United States. At any rate, this boat made it home.
.
A couple of pigeons watch the sights in Tiburon. Parts of the boardwalk by the ferry dock dropped into the bay, but at least you get to see more of the bay now.

.
And we're back in Berkeley, now, where a grocery is going up. A man on a girder looks down at another worker. My hearing was compromised by the construction noises, but it seems the guy up there shouted down to the other worker, "Stop saying I'm cute!" Anyway, it's an ambitious project, they'll have an entire floor devoted to cabbage.
.
Emeryville used to be an industrial town. If a company wanted to pollute, but San Francisco didn't approve, they would take their factories across the bay. That's what an old-timer told me. It helped that the railroad tracks ran through Emeryville. These days, Emeryville is bereft of factories. Instead, they have Pixar and little companies that do software design and which build toy robots. The trains still roll through the East Bay, they pass beneath the Amtrak overpass here, but they don't stop in Emeryville anymore.
.
And we close with some purple flowers in San Rafael.

Wings and Wheels and Paws

.
Here's a dog that wandered over to greet me in Mill Valley. Its owner let me take a portrait, so say hello to Miller Throckmorton Blithedale. His friends call him Throck for short. I got cute and called him Milthblith, and then he nipped me near the ankle. My mistake. A beautiful dog, though, and smart.

.

Hummingbirds are amazing to watch. They seem to move up and down as fast as they fly forwards. Meanwhile, their hearts beat somewhere around a thousand a minute. Difficult to photograph, though, with my tiny handheld digital camera. Here's one near a garden in Emeryville.

.

Here's a bug I photographed in Berkeley, some sort of fly. I suppose its wings make the hummingbird seem lethargic. Meanwhile, we put one leg in front of another and lumber along the sidewalk. Works for me.

.

This was outside a fabric/sewing/knitting store in Berkeley. It looks like a bicycle, or two bicycles, or two unicycles with a bicycle. I guess it defeats thieves by confusing them.

.

There's a creek that runs through San Anselmo, in Marin County, also known as the Town Where The Reclusive Movie Director Lives. In recent years, the creek rose fast during the winter rains, then flooded out the businesses on the adjoining street. Today, it simply reflected the sky and trees.

.

I was privileged to stand close to a white fence in Berkeley and catch a couple of small birds. One bird was parked on the fence, while another one darted into view as it flew with some other birds. Suddenly, the bird braked, ready to take a break on the rail, but then it changed its mind and left. All in half a second.
.

On The Streets

.
We had some humidity in the Bay Area recently, lots of clouds, even in the morning. To almost everybody else in the US, clouds in the morning like this aren't worth photographing, but there was somebody else in the Corte Madera parking lot next to Bay Club fitness, and he was taking photos as well. Most of the time, if we have clouds, the cloud cover is extensive. And widespread. We're not used to blue and white and gray. Too intense.
.
Here's the Baylink ferry steaming to San Francisco from Vallejo. The ride takes about an hour and costs $15.

.

The city of San Rafael has a project to clean and modernize 4th Street in the West End section. They've been removing trees and repaving the street. The street looks better, even if some trees were killed for the sake of commerce.

Here's what caught my eye, though, when I looked at their project sign. That sleek modern car coming toward us, was it made by Detroit? No. Could that be something from Japan? No. That's a Mercedes in the official project sign. How many cities in the United States would put up a sign for their street improvement project and fill the eye with a Mercedes Benz? Maybe Stuttgart, Arkansas.  Several times this year alone, I've posted photographs of exoticars, and in what city were these special cars photographed? San Rafael. And what street? 4th. They should have put a Ferrari on that sign.
.

If you drive your exoticar out of San Rafael on 4th Street -or just your Mercedes- you'll be on your way to Nicasio. The cattle were grazing by the church, everything's informal in Nicasio. 

.

Not to be outdone by San Rafael's project to clean and repave the West End, San Geronimo residents have decided to clean up the streets of their fair town. It will take longer, San Geronimo only has about 450 residents, but at least they won't be cutting down trees.

.

Meanwhile, back in Berkeley, there's a shopping cart missing from Whole Foods, two miles away.

Young Skywalker

I was wandering aimlessly through San Rafael this morning, taking my usual route, when I looked up and noticed a young man on a tightrope. Was that the French aerial artist, Philippe Petit? And was he walking a tightrope across 4th Street in San Rafael? Sure, but what was Philippe doing in San Rafael, besides crossing 4th Street the hard way? No net, no harness, no ropes, just a long balancing pole to keep him suspended safely above the traffic on 4th Street. What guts, what agility, what balance.

Take a closer look, now. What's that on the left, that dark building? That is one of the World Trade Center towers back in 1974. You are actually looking at my photograph of a movie poster inside a glass case at the Rafael Theater. Philippe on the wire is in the upper half of the poster. The glass also reflected the businesses along 4th Street behind me. If you never heard of Philippe Petit, he was walking the sky a year or two before Star Wars. The movie on the poster is titled Man On Wire.

On the 7th of August, 1974, Philippe Petit accomplished the greatest stunt of all time, except for maybe that hilarious D.B. Cooper incident. Philippe Petit was 24 years old. Without approval, he installed a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He then stepped off the south tower and onto the tightrope, 110 floors above the planet, about 1300 feet.

Did Philippe Petit cross the tightrope and step off once he reached the north tower? No he did not, he's French. He made 8 crossings, he watched airliners passing, he talked to a seagull that flew around him. Philippe Petit did pretty much everything he could to delay the end of his walk. He sat down on the steel cable. He danced. He captivated and thrilled people on the ground and in the windows of the downtown skyscrapers.

The police did the best they could trying to talk him off the tightrope, but when Petit got to the north tower, he turned and ran back toward the middle! According to a police officer at the scene, Philippe Petit was bouncing up and down from the tightrope, during which his feet were actually leaving the tightrope.

Here's a photo I shot Wednesday. A woman was skipping rope in Emeryville. Her feet did appear to leave the ground as well. I was impressed by her as well. No net, no ropes. What guts, what agility, what balance.

Petit was eventually motivated to conclude his show because the police said they would send a helicopter to pluck him off the tightrope, and he was concerned about the winds a helicopter would create around him. Forty-five minutes after he started, Philippe Petit stepped off the tightrope and into police custody.

Petit's skywalking adventure made headlines around the world and brought the new World Trade Center publicity they needed. The twin towers weren't completed yet, and businesses were not racing to lease space there. Petit's stunt put the twin towers on the map, so to speak, and the charges against him for the illegal crossing were dropped. The city realized how special his achievement was, and the Port Authority gave him a lifetime free pass to the observation deck of the World Trade Center.

There's a movie about Philippe Petit that's opening soon at the Smith-Rafael center, Man On Wire. I heard a radio interview with the director of the movie, it sounds good. The movie has already won awards, including the jury and audience prizes at Sundance.