last weekend was up your alley, otherwise known as the dore alley fair. like folsom street fair, it’s a leather and fetish event in san francisco. it’s much smaller, the crowd is more local, and the weather isn’t as nice (unless, of course, you’re shooting film).

like folsom, my friend emery was gracious enough to host a party at his house, just a short walk from where all the action is.

i decided to take the rolleicord with me, since i haven’t used the camera for some time. it turned out to be a decent camera for street shooting. relatively small, quiet, and the xenar lens is pretty sweet.

This is one of my photographer friends, Yve Fontilea. She’s an easy bay based professional photographer. She and I agreed to do a mutual portrait session. We met last weekend at the Alameda Naval Base, which has an endless supply of interesting backdrops for pictures. A cute downtown area, barren huge parking lots, abandoned and active warehouses, Navy ships, subsidized housing.

These were taken with my Burke & James 8×10 camera, with the Gundlach triple-convertible lens. The film was Kodak TXP 320 pulled to ISO 80, developed in stock Xtol for 5 minutes. Printed on Ilford MGD.1M glossy RC paper.

You can see one of the pictures of me Yve took, here.

I’m finding this combination – lens, film, developer – works really well for these portraits. The lens itself has so much character, it really makes these images work. I feel sometimes that I’m just enabling it, I’m not really doing much at all myself. I just set it up, point, and shoot.

in san francisco, pink saturday is the day before the annual gay pride parade. the parade itself is a spectacle in itself, with an estimated 1.2 million attendees. the night before the parade, however, is when the craziness happens. a large swath of castro street and market street are blocked off. the area becomes a multi-stage concert venue and block party.

as is our annual custom, we went to a house party in the castro before coming outside to brave the crowds out on the street. i decided to bring what i’ve called the party camera, a crown graphic with a sunpak 444d and four grafmatic backs. entering a sweltering house packed with people, bringing such a huge camera, heavy camera might not cross your mind.

preparing for the party reminded me of last year’s folsom street party, where i felt really disconnected with the scene. this was a little different. it felt more like bringing along one of my crazy cameras to a party where all my friends were. “oh, you need to let schlachet take your picture with his crazy camera!”

i did learn a few lessons from shooting with this setup. first, when the subject is very close i should be looking through the camera and ignoring the sports viewer. second, when i slow down and think my shots come out much better.

overall, i am pretty pleased with the set. it’s quite an experience shooting hand-held 4×5 at night, let alone seeing your friends at a party in large format.

i am still learning now to scan and produce images for the web. i find it fairly frustrating — dust on prints or negatives, dust in the scanner, the scanner not pulling out all the times, different color profiles, file formats and storage. what i consider “photography” has its perils and roadblocks, but none of this stuff is what i signed up for. i’m glad i’m not scanning all the time, it would probably force me more offline in my work.

this is erik leung, a local digital photographer. we agreed to do mutual portraits, and we went to this wonderful spot he had previously scouted. the sun was already getting low but i managed to get in a good shot at iso 2500. the sun made a wonderful backlight.

i contact printed this image on ilford glossy rc, part of a growing collection of images of photographers.

this is brad evans, talented street portrait shooter.

last weekend a group i’m in on flickr held a bar-b-que in golden gate park. i brought my burke&james camera and holders loaded with 320TXP. i shot portraits of some of the group using the gundlach rapid rectigraphic. these are contact printed onto ilford mgd.1m paper with a #3 filter. these dark images are so nice on paper in front of your eyes, and i can never get the scans to look just right.

coy, with his partner erwin.

rai

adam

reese

it was also wonderful to spend time in the darkroom again. i vowed to not post negative scans as much, while producing more physical prints this year. the negatives from this set turned out very evenly exposed, so printing was very easy. i think the 8×10 is my favorite portrait camera by far.

So I am in a flickr group called Blow-Up!, named after the 1966 movie by Michelangelo Antonioni. The movie is about a photographer who accidentally catches a crime scene on film.

The group on flickr has become a collective of largely San Francisco based photographers, many of whom shoot street. The lot of us decided to do a show, a public display of our body of work. There were 21 of us in the show, demonstrating a variety of styles and subject matters. The show is currently up at Cigar Bar & Grill in San Francisco until May 21st.

The above photo shows me with some great local Photographers: Jansen Zhang, Andrew Chin, John Agoncillo, myself, Chris Jewell, and Jose Marco.

I showed three images, all 8×10 contact prints. I hung them a little lower, in an attempt to get people to get up close to them. And man, I look like a nerd here.

All in all, the reception was pretty epic. I think everybody in the group is riding high after the event, and there is already a “let’s doing this again!” idea posted to flickr. I’m so proud to be part of such an awesome group. These people are as passionate about photography as  I am.

these photos are by paulino love.

i want to share a gift from my parents with you. this is a picture my dad took of me sleeping on the floor. it was taken in october of 1976, so i was a year and a half old. today i turn thirty-five.

as a tourist in bangalore, if you want to do some shopping you end up at brigade road. it’s a dense commercial area that is home to a plethora of outlets, shops, stalls, and street vendors. you will be yelled after and followed by people peddling their wares, offering to be your rickshaw driver for the day, take you to the best sites (bangalore palace, cubbon park, etc). i loved walking up and down, but found it tiring after a while.

this was my first time in more than a week that i’d heard spoken languages other than arabic, kannada, and other local dialects. i found it slightly comforting that i wasn’t the *only* foreigner around. i saw americans and europeans i secretly labeled as “pale ones” to myself, although outside of a few glances and knods, never interacted substantially with them. there were a lot of people i couldn’t quite place — indian complexion with asian features. maybe sri lankan?

i know so little about the world.

visiting a foreign country where your native language is spoken but not indigenous is an interesting experience. it’s like lending a someone a camera .. the mechanics of its use are the same but the product are different. you know what it’s capable of, but the resulting product brings a few surprises. this is how i felt about english in bangalore.

i found this land ownership sign along outer ring road, where my company’s office is located. these signs were everywhere. a few things about this particular sign struck me. first was the contrast between the english words and the indian name. second was the land on which this sign is posted. like most unused plots of land here, it’s mostly flat and very dusty, the front edge has piles of trash, and the rear usually is home to squatters. people live in these concrete brick boxes or even tents.

the reddish-brown color of the dirt here became the underlying color of everything – my the buildings and signs, the air i breathed, my shoes, and my clothes. southern india certainly has a certain color palette of its own.

i was also crazy hot while i was there. mid- to upper-nineties every day. for three weeks. i was so glad i packed mostly shorts.

(click the image for a larger version)

the auto-rickshaw, so abundant they merit their own wikipedia page. these are little three-wheeled cabs just large enough for two adult passengers. they’re the easiest way to get around if you have a short trip in mind.

usually you bargain with the driver. most travel sites recommend not getting in a cab unless the meter is used. you can see in this picture the red sign on the meter is still up, i had negotiated a flat rate for this trip. the drivers will say almost anything to not use the meter, including stating that the meter is inaccurate, they can’t make change, your trip is taking them too far out of the main area, etc. if you decide on a flat rate you negotiate that as well, and hope you aren’t being ripped off. and by “ripped off” i mean down to the rupee. and when all this is over, you realize you’ve just spend a lot of time arguing over one u.s. dollar‘s worth of money, or less.

one day, i was standing in a small group of rickshaw drivers trying to figure out which one knew where i wanted to go. i wanted a specific intersection near the bangalore palace grounds. they knew the area, but not the roads. the usual thing to do is to go as far or as close as you can, and ask someone there for directions. oddly, at any hour of the day there seems to be someone around who can point you (or your driver) in the right direction. anyways, i was standing with a group of drivers when a stranger walked up, and in clear english asked me if i needed help negotiating. he talked to them in kanneda (the local dialect) and decided that my 300 rupees was far, considering how far i was going. this ~35 minute trip was going to cost me just over $6. i had already brought the price down from the originally stated Rs 500.

i hate to negotiate, but after a few rounds you get used to it.. especially if you get a feel for how things really are and know what you’ve paid in the past.

the road to the left in this picture is actually the service road, a parallel road used to enter/exit, merge, and access the local businesses.

in the united states, this would be considered a two lane road. when traffic is heavy in bangalore, this road would carry vehicles 3, 4, or maybe 5 vehicles across depending on their width. the roads are ruled by large busses and trucks, then any space is filled in by cars, followed by auto-rickshaws, any remaining space filled by two-wheeled motorbikes. vehicles are like water that flow through the streets like a canal.

photo was shot on kodak portra 160vc +1 1/2, with a widelux f7. click for larger version.

a project at work evolved into a three week business trip to india so i could setup new infrastructure and do some hands-on training with my colleagues there. i just returned to the u.s. this past weekend and i’m still suffering from jetlag, but slowly things are returning to normal for me.

india was pretty crazy. i spent most of my time on the outskirts of bangalore, karnataka, the “silicon valley of india”. it was an amazing mix of third world country and modern technology. some of my commutes to work included cows on the street, women carrying large baskets full of wares on their head, ox-pulled carts, corporate logo backpacks and RFID badges.

of course, just before this trip my borrowed camera developed a light leak. so i borrowed another, which happened to have some exposure problems (i’m soooo glad i tested it before i left!). so i travelled to india with my iphone, two malfunctioning canon ae-1 cameras, and my widelux f7.

i tracked down a small camera repair shop and had both canons serviced. the leaking body sounds a lot better but i wasn’t able to address the leaks. the other body also sounds better now, but still needs work. so i shrugged it off and proceeded to shoot with just my iphone and my widelux for three weeks. not quite what i was expecting.. but i can’t complain.

this picture exemplifies my experience in bangalore: construction, laptop bags, dusty roads, and cows.

it’s taken years to implement, but now the future of public transit is here — or so i thought.

in the bay area, there are many public transit agencies and systems, and they all have their own payment systems. translink is supposed to the solution to this. you buy a RFID translink card, put stored value (“e-cash”), put electronic transit passes on it, and then use the one card on all systems.

i purchased a translink card at my neighborhood walgreens, and after registering it online, several days later it was fully functioning. i used it on bart, on muni, and on caltrain with little problem.

then on friday, january 29th, i tried using my card at the 24th Mission BART station and the card reader said ‘see station agent’. i tried multiple readers and got the same error. i eventually went to the station agent, who said my card wasn’t working and to call translink. i was running late, so i purchased a BART ticket and used it to get to my destination. later i called translink, who asked that i try holding the card to the reader for 5-6 seconds. i tried this with no luck.

i talked to translink again and determined the fastest way to get service back was to purchase a new card. i bought a card for $5 and called them back to have my card registered and the e-cash balance transferred. i then logged into my account on the translink website and didn’t see the card and couldn’t register its serial number. so i called back and they reset my account, so i could login and see the new card. i tried purchasing a fast pass on the website but that transaction failed, with a message asking me to call translink for resolution. i called in again and was asked to log out and log back in and re-try the transaction. i did so, and was able to purchase the pass and had translink verify the transaction went through while i had them on the phone. then i was told it would take up to 3 business days for the pass to go through.

i waited a few days and then tried my card again, with no success. at this point i am getting really fed up wth the whole thing. while adding value to my real bart ticket i missed my intended train and ended up being late. later i called translink and was told that there was no balance transfer yet, but that they would do that now and everything should be ok in the morning (after midnight).

today i tried my card today and again it did not work. when i came home later i called translink back. i was asked to call back in front of an add-value machine. at this point, i got on first-name basis with the support rep. i let them know how fed up i was getting, and that i just wanted them to tell me where to go and what to do, to get this resolved.

i walked quickly to 24th/mission, took bart to civic center, and called back in front of one of their machines. the girl i talked to was not available but i did not want to wait. i explained my predicament to this other person, and they only offered to mail me a new card. she said it would be quick since they were local, so i offered to drive to their office. not open to the public, great.

i asked if the new card would have my e-cache balance and my muni fast pass. the answer was yes. we’ll see about that.

so in summary, my original card stopped working with no explanation. i bought a brand new card, which has never worked, and it took translink several days beyond the normal processing time to get everything transferred and it still doesn’t work. and now i am waiting for a third card, to be sent to me in the mail.

here are some pointers i’ve learned along the way:

1. if your card stops working, call them immediately and have them send you a replacement card with everything transferred over.

2. if you talk to their support folks, do not let them end the call until you are completely satisfied. i literally called them 5 times, each time getting one specific task done, hanging up, and having to call them back.

3. have a back-up plan. a bart ticket with plenty of value on it. correct change for a muni bus.

4. if your card breaks, budget at least a week to get back into using the system.

if i receive this third card and it does not work, i vow to drive to their office in concord and insist on speaking to a customer service manager. i will also be writing up a letter to them concerning this pathetic follow-through.

Today at work, we experienced one of those puzzles you read but rarely experience in real life.

We have a relatively new row in our server room at work, where it is surrounded closely on three sides by walls. on one of the short ends, there is a plastic barrier you can walk through (think the thick plastic strips that cover the opening of a walk-in freezer).

Over time we have slowly filled the cabinets in the row with servers, generally working from the far end towards the center, then filling the other end. We ended up with a mostly full row.

Now in this row there are APC In-Row chillers, inserted between the cabinets, which pull air in front the back (the ‘hot isle’) and push cold air out the front (the ‘cold isle’). They measure the temperature coming out of the back of the cabinets and into the front of the cabinets to ensure they are cooling enough for the demand.

Something changed over the break, where the temperature in the server room actually jumped several degrees. And last week while installing some new servers in the remaining cabinet, we noticed the chillers suddenly had a hard time keeping the row cool. I’d enter either side, and the chiller fans would immediately speed up.

We couldn’t explain the increased temperature elsewhere in the server room, and the strange behavior of the fans. Furthermore, today we noticed the fans were going full-speed all day.

My coworker Chris finally figured it out this afternoon.

He opened the the door of the cabinet with the remaining cabinet, the one with the most open space. The door happens to have a temperature sensor attached to it, so when the door was open the sensor was in the surrounding cool air and the chillers slowed down. Close the door, the chillers speed up. He figured out that this cabinet was the only opening left in the row, so the hot air behind the row was coming forward through the cabinet – and directly into the temperature sensor. Of course, the chillers thought the row was super hot, they were measuring the cabinet exhaust temperature, not the intake temperature.

Chris shoved an unused ceiling tile in the cabinet, covering the large opening behind the sensor. The chillers immediately settled down.

It turned out to be a simple problem with a simple solution.

i was walking down mission street (2600 block) when i turned around to see a girl and her mother next to a UPS truck. the girl was vomiting on the street while the UPS delivery woman was unloading packages. *snap*

i love these little moments. this is why you prefocus and stop your lens all the way down.

met this canadian guy named ryan last wekeend at a picnic. he seems really nice. this morning i caught myself thinking, what am i doing? what are my intentions? it just all seems so natural.. maybe that’s not the kind of think you should question? and tonight we’re having dinner together. it sounds like a date.

from my journal, dated august 8th, 2003.

dad would be 62 today. although it is easily searchable in my blog, i like to let pass the memory of his last few days and replace it instead with the day he was born, december 9th.  people have the most potential on the day they were born. i like this entry from wikipedia:

The term birth is used metaphorically to refer to a beginning, especially of a natural phenomenon, one that is impressive in its scope or complexity, or one that is viewed favorably.

thanks, branden, for digging up, scanning, and sending me this photo.

zbigniew pik was a foreign exchange student from poland, who attended our highschool in indiana. we recently re-connected on facebook. he told me he bought a bunch of broken-and-repaired cameras and accessories in sweden. he sold a lot of it but had a few items left. he saw that i was shooting with a pentax 6×7 and had a waist level viewer for it. he sent it to me in a padded envelope — the one pictured above.

when i received it, i saw a lot of the address had been eliminated due to some sort of moisture on the sticker. it still found its way to me, thanks to human oversight in package delivery. when i opened it, i was surprised by seeing the WLF, and laughed. one of the few pentax accessories i don’t have yet. my system is one step towards being comprehensive.

i love seeing packages from foreign countries. what struck me most about this one was the stamp, which seems like nylon or some sort of fabric. it’s iridescent and very detailed — beautiful.

thanks pike, for the great gift.

a couple weeks ago, i went out shooting in embarcadero/northbeach with some flickr folks. after lunch, reese and i made our way back through chinatown where we ducked into the wok shop. it’s an old family run business where you can buy hand-hammered woks. beyond the woks, there are a ton of other kitchen gadgets, tools, and other tchotchkes. when we saw this mirror amidst all the laterns, i knew i had to take a shot of the two of us….

part of attending the folsom street fair is attending my friends ted and emery’s annual folsom house party. this year, i did things backwards and different. i attended the fair first with photographer friends, then later showed up at the party. i had two cameras and a bag full of film with me once i got to the party, so i was in a shooting mindset.

i ended up with images that are pretty different from usual party photos. when i’m at a party or out with friends, i am very rarely shooting them with a camera. so this was a unique opportunity to do so. i felt fairly disconnected from the usual goings-on since i was in this different mode. i’m not sure i’ll do it again, for a couple reasons.

so here’s a glimpse into what i experience at ted and emery’s annual folsom party. enjoy.

a week ago i went to the annual folsom street fair, an event that draws a crowd of 400,000 people to vendor exhibits, food, demonstrations, live music, and dance parties. in the past i’ve gone to a friend’s house party, since he lives at the end of the fair site. this year, i had a very different experience.

i started my day with breakfast with a group of photographer friends, wandered through the fair with them with our cameras. i rendezvoused with my friends reese and frank, and later met up the party folks.

folsom is quite an eye-opener for the uninitiated. there is a lot of public nudity, bondage and leather, and spanking going on. it’s interesting in that private fantasy and behaviors are on display. you see a lot of extreme preferences.

i was out with two cameras, both loaded with arista premium. the 24×36 frames are from a canon ae-1 program shooting at iso 400. the wide frames are from a widelux f7, shooting at iso 200. all film developed in rodinal 1+50.