YB Station

 

YBG

 

Windfoils (now I know what they are)

I wanted to know more about the competition we came across, but my searches for sail / kite / board / surfing were all in vain.  Windfoil is apparently a word now. 

Marina-ness

 

Wave Glass Woman

 

Saturday in the Park

The weather was warm, and the fog pulled back enough for me to enjoy infrared photography! What a great day.

It was all I could hope for.  My feet will forgive me for the 16k steps in new shoes.

BART Temple (25 July 2026)

Have I ever written about this piece?  It sits atop the elevator.  This is Louis "Cork" Marcheschi's "Home," and it is so cheerful!

I found the name on BART's website in this inventory of all BART art (https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/inventory%20for%20posting.pdf).

On the way to Bay Front Park (25 July 2026)

My sunny walk last weekend continued.  It was the first time I've been close to the sculpture called "Steelhead" (detail at top left) by Bryan Tedrick.  It was not my first time in the sculpture called "Louis" (lower right) by DeWitt Godfrey. 

Mission Creek and China Basin Park (25 July 2026)

It was gorgeous last weekend!  I wanted to test settings on my infrared camera, and wasn't confident that the fog could resist Golden Gate Park, and so I headed east instead.  The weather was glorious, and I was able to practice with my camera to interesting results.

Anchor Steam (25 July 2026)

It's been a while since I visited the local Anchor Steam brewery, which is inactive while it waits for its new owner to decide what to do with the beer, brand, and facilities.  Years ago I worked in the area, and always knew when they were roasting hops - it makes for a powerful smell that blanketed the area. 

Dahlias

It is that season here! 

Independence Day Golden Gate Bridge Fireworks 2026

The 250th US Anniversary / Independence Day fireworks show in San Francisco featured fireworks shot directly from/on/within the Golden Gate Bridge, and so attracted audiences from far afield.  As we joke, it also attracted the bay's traditional fog: however, to my delight, the fog remained the high sort, and so the surface of the Bay was clear, and the deck of the bridge was completely visible.

I left my home at about 6:45pm, but that wasn't early enough to catch the neighborhood bus that would have taken me directly to my destination on a national holiday: buses were being cancelled, and the few that did arrive at rare intervals were completely full and not taking new passengers.  I took a streetcar, and then took a Lyft part of the way there, but wound up walking from California & Arguello all the way to the Warming Hut just east of the Bridge on the waterfront.

On the way, I enjoyed the Sausalito fireworks show (seen above), and marvelled at the traffic stopped on the on and offramps to the bridge, which was closed for public safety.

 

The fireworks from the bridge deck were visible!  Few went high enough to completely disappear into the fog ceiling.

Barge fireworks also were adjusted to burst low, and so were visible and enjoyable

There were even times when most of the South Tower and its own fireworks were visible!

After the brief show, the vast and cheerful crowds took hours to depart.  ("This is a vibe!" said a pleased and surprised woman passing me at Tunnel Tops.)  Traffic was at a standstill.  So... I walked all the way to the Richmond District, and eventually down to 6th and Geary, where the first bus I tried to take was too full to appeal to me.  My rideshare took a long time to arrive, by which time I could have taken a nearly empty bus, but would still have had a long walk ahead of me at the other end, so the rideshare made sense.

I was several hours too late to set up my tripod and bulky camera to take long instant exposures, but I still had a good time.  (The fog was very reflective, so I'm not convinced the instant images would have been good - contrast between the fireworks and fog would likely have been low, especially with my limited skills.) The crowd's heavy use of flashlights interfered with even my phone photos, as people flashed their lights back into the viewers while looking for friends.  I'm not especially disappointed, because I COULD SEE THE FIREWORKS, and also because the photos I am showing here look distinctly different from those of my prior clear-skied shows in an interesting way.  

It was a pleasant evening. And I got something like TWENTY ONE THOUSAND steps in.

Scenes in the formerly industrial eastern Mission

My recent prolific photo scanning projects overflowed my available storage, so I went out today to purchase an external storage drive.  While I was out, I took a walk down Harrison Street from Division to see what the area is like now.   Previously a district with light industrial businesses, it now has fashionable cafes and shops of the sort that sell letterpress cards (if you know what I mean).  

It was a lovely walk.  The wind hadn't yet picked up, and I spent too much money on books (as I tend to do).  Here are some photos representing the walk.

 

Night of laser and light art (and Instax Wide long exposures of them)

My Cousin met me last night so we could enjoy Illuminate's 7x7 laser light installation at Civic Center Plaza.  It is installed just across the street from their Fulton Plaza SPECTRA Light Installation project created by Joshua Hubert which is also a delight (and which moves through patterned sequences that are soothing to enjoy).

It was a warm-ish night; there was a talented DJ playing music within the sculpture; there was a person with a tall ladder and a bubble gun to create patterns in the lasers that were similar to fish shining in streams of sunlight.  It was DELIGHTFUL.

It wasn't truly dark until after 9:30!  I brought my full-sized tripod and several packages of Instax Wide, and made numerous guestimates of how long my exposures should take.  The best results came from around four seconds - LASERS ARE BRIGHT! - and my long and short exposures of City Hall all came out similar within a range from three to six seconds.

Another delightful evening with my Cousin and SF's Art!

Day of monochrome Polaroids

I had a rare day off, and spend it exploring my hometown and taking photos. Polaroids are... not very consistent.  It's not like my SX-70 rollers are dirty - the film itself has... let's call them quirks.  (The things I put up with for the love of my SX-70!)

One Kearney / 23 Geary Rooftop

There is a series of Privately Owned Public Open Spaces in San Francisco (see the sfpopos.com website for details), and having worked downtown for so much of my career, I've sat in MOST of them.  But not this one!  Accessible through the entrance to 23 Geary Blvd, after showing ID, signing in, and having the guard set up the elevator for you, it is possible to enjoy this small sun deck with its benches and potted shrubs - and the view of the wild roof of One Kearney.  It was a nice spot to visit. 

WelcomeSF: Rainbows of Lasers down Market Street

I have good friends who remind me to go see light sculptures! I was out far past my bedtime for WelcomeSF's installation in honor of PRIDE.  The lasers shining down Market Street were glorious!  There was a festival atmosphere: people were thrilled and standing in the street to admire the colors with joy and awe.

Being who I am, I decided to try to photograph it with a Lomo Instax Wide Glass camera.  I hadn't realized how many objects would be removed from the parade route for public safety: I had hoped to use bus shelter glass and similar objects to brace my mini-tripod, but they were missing.  I also learned that the bollards at the end of Market Street are WOBBLY, which... did NOT help me!

I wasted about ten frames on images with the camera braced against unstable objects, but I got a few successes.  Plus: light painting using the laser array is GREAT!  Too much for the film to manage, so it solarizes in a fun way.

Yaaay, lasers! 

Evening at the Palace of Fine Arts

It was all fun and games until the fog came in!  And the fog arrived with surprising speed.

My goal for the evening was to practice using Instax Wide in a Lomo camera that permits exposures of up to 30 seconds to capture the PoFA as best as the film would permit.  There are some tricks to it, and the artificial light is especially yellow in the images.  This also occurred on my digital images at certain speeds, and the light is truly yellow, so it's not purely an artifact of the film: the color shifts based on exposure in any format.

Overall, I found the Instax tricky.  Images taken from a distance required longer exposures than I expected, say 12 - 15 seconds, while closer exposures were shorter than 10 seconds.

The photos with the sky visibly blue were tricky.  The intensity of the lights on the structure was too bright in some areas and too dim in others to make an easy print.  But I'm glad I tried this, and I'm glad I stopped once my tripod head stopped cooperating with me. 

It was a lovely night to be out.

A prickly wall (earlier June 2026)

I've taken so many photos of this metal sculptural screen... 

Red and White (but not specifically Swiss)

Details from the longest lasting flowers in a bouquet from earlier in the week.  The tie in to my new, red Switzerland hat was not planned.