(2048×1628)

After seeing some of my street portraits, my coworker Hari wanted me to do a portrait of him as well with my Crown Graphic. I did two images, two shots each. The first was in our 6th floor conference room, which I love, but this shot in our server room turned out much better.

Hari works on our Global NOC team from Bangalore. He’s finishing up an extended visit here to California, to work in our Operations group while my coworker Chris is out on paternity leave and I’m busy with a project. It’s been great having him here for sure, and his working closely with us helps strengthen ties between our operations here and our monitoring/support there.

I hope he likes the portrait.

Here are a pair of shots I took of Ryan last Monday. I’ve been holding onto a factory-sealed box of Fuji 160 NPS with an expiration date of 2005. I decided to crack the seal and give it a spin. In late morning, many of the Mission’s colorful alleyways are still relatively quiet and Monday’s cloud cover had not quite broken. Perfect situations for a color portrait. I had the film developed with a day turn-around at Light Waves in SOMA.

As you can tell from my blog, I don’t often do color work. I usually dislike all the business with profiles, color temperature, saturation and hue, and all that.

Speaking of portraits in the Mission, I was chatting with John and Alan the other night about that topic. They’ve given me some ideas on how to step up my game on Mission photography. I’ve got some homework to do, some ideas, and a mission of my own. Maybe I can narrow my goal from being that guy to being that guy in the Mission. Part of my homework begins this weekend, doing some printing from 4×5 film. I gotta find some live paper, and probably get some fresh paper developer before then.

I absolutely love looking at blueprints. They are an interesting mix of art and measure. A building plan shows character from its architect, yet follows strict guidelines. The print itself has some artistic qualities to it, yet the lines are so precisely drawn to scale. I took a class in highschool on architectural drawing and it was one of my most favorite classes all throughout school.

These are kids from the Cougar Cadets drumline, an after school program for elementary through highschool youth in the Bay Area. They were fund-raising down at Powell/Market. They had just finished up as I got there.

People share stories from Egypt during an anti-Mubarak rally in San Francisco.

Last weekend I burned through two Grafmatics during the rally but came away feeling luke-warm about what was there, photographically. It’s a historical event, my images won’t be timely, and frankly most protests/rallies look the same. I decided to split and joined some photo friends downtown instead.

(2048×1624)

Unfortunately I didn’t record this guy’s name. He came out of Rasputin’s holding a small bag. He was dressed in such an interesting manner, with his hat and his pins vertically down his outfit. What I do remember about him is that he spoke very low, quietly, but quickly. A long time San Francisco resident. He had on M.L.K. pins to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr Day.

(2048×1626)

Two girls on Powell Street. This was taken in that 4-5pm hour when the light is really nice. I saw these two interesting looking girls crossing the street and intercepted them to ask to take a portrait. Powell is an interesting mix of tourists, Union Square shoppers, locals heading down to the mall, patrons exiting Rasputin’s. It’s usually not too difficult to find interesting characters to shoot.