Feeling festive

I'm playing with Mirrorlab on my Chromebook with photos I just made of some ornaments, and am perhaps having too much fun?

As if there is any such thing as too much fun with photography...

Stormset

Unexpected rose over the Bay...

Between rain clouds

As a child of one of the many droughts here in California, I still find rain NOVEL.

Topped up tower (South Van Ness)

The construction site just across the street from it has broken ground as well...  It's strange to see such tall buildings where low rises have been for decades.

Lines of pigeons

Enhanced SF (from afar)

The phone filter is really working on enhancing that ridge line, isn't it?  This is a zoomed in view of the SF skyline from near where the Bobcat Trail meets the Marincello and Miwok Trails.

Looking South from within the Headlands

This is from the Bobcat Trail.  You can see the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge peeking up on the left; Sutro Tower in the center of SF in the left third, and the shore all the way down to Pedro point in Pacifica in the right at about 80% across.

Above Marin

My friends were up for an easy hike, so I suggested we walk Tennessee Valley.  It's a gorgeous part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (nps.gov/goga), and relatively flat.  It's been years since I've been there, but it is a lovely place. So, off we went.

We parked near the GGNRA Tennessee Valley sign, started off at a trailhead, and and then walked up, up, and more up while I marveled at how I didn't recognize anything at all.  Was it because I had biked in?  Was it because it had been so many years?  And where did all these stairs come from?

We weren't on the Tennessee Valley trail: we were climbing up the Oakwood Meadow Trail (which isn't for bikes, which led me to believe I'd just skipped it), all the way to this view on the Alta Trail.

It was worth it, this view.  Only because my friends forgave me.

Dusk blue

Rosy sunset sky

The air quality has been miserable since the fires, but there are consolations.  Colorful consolations.

Masonry meander

This gave me a flashback to something I designed, but this is BUILT and quite nice.  The stone colors are subtle.  I hope the verticals light up at night!

Applied Wall Art, Lower Haight

A bit of freestyle stickering.  I'm sure there's a term for this that I'm not fancy enough to know, specific to having-the-shapes-cut-out-like-appliqué.

Lower Haight Murals 6

(I have a panorama of this wall as mural 5, but it exceeds my post size.)

Nice lettering.

Lower Haight Murals 4

More really great stencil work.  Super talented artists!

Lower Haight Murals 3

These three are taller than life size, and adorn a new-ish looking building that is likely an apartment block.

Lower Haight Murals 2

There is a lot of really impressive stencil work going on here, and in the prior mural!

Lower Haight Murals 1

I don't often visit the Lower Haight neighborhood, and when I think of murals, I think of the Mission District's extensive collection.  But I wound up taking an informal mural tour of Haight (east of Divisadero), and was delighted by the work.

Victorian cuteness (with dancing skeletons)

These are all just so CHARMING.  I'm a modern, glass-box person, but still.  *squealing sound*

The dancing skeletons are near the bougainvillea. 

My phone decided that this was showing too much perspective, and so it adjusting it in a way that makes me perceive the windows as no longer truly rectilinear.  But I think I'm being too sensitive about the distortion-to-de-distort-perspective-lines.  

Corner of many corners

This is near Duboce Park, and I find the handling of the corners interesting.  And a lot of work!

The mysterious tiny bay windows on the left

It's as if they couldn't decide what size the windows should be, made the openings too big and so  painted over the top third, and THEN decided to make a half floor upstairs?  Perhaps they enjoyed Being John Malkovich and did this in tribute?  It is odd.