Spider!!!

I don't particularly love spiders, they creep me out when they run really fast. This sculpture is outside the National Gallery of Canada (in Ottawa). I was lucky enough to go in and visit their exhibit of British photographs from as early as the 1830's. It was really amazing to me. The earliest ones were daguerreotype, and later dates had photograms.

Not a Troll But a Turtle

This big one was under a bridge. My aunt spotted it as we passed by... I have never seen one this big in nature. Too bad there was no good size comparison nearby. ... I wonder if its tail can still go inside the shell with all those scales and spikes.

Antelope Valley

Continue my L.A. saga. Besides my digital Z2, I also brought along my medium format Seagull. The 120 film jammed in my Seagull. I struggled to unjammed it while standing in the middle paradise. I only managed to get one good shot. The one you are looking at. Sad, isn't it.

Curtain

An arrangement of textures, colours, and lines that I found appealing.

The End of the Cherry Blossom Parade

Hi all. Long time no post.

This is the ending of a great parade in the annual Cherry Blossom Parade in San Francisco's Japantown.

Note all of the sake casks. Wish I had one.

Foamy Surf at Ocean Beach

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 20mm f1.7

This was taken on a clear day last February.

(Here's a wide shot from my Mu-43 gear for Ted, LOL!)

I'm practicing my B&W conversions. You can see the incredible resolution of the little Lumix 20mm here.

--Warren

farmer's market

'take our picture' they said...and i did!

rd1 with 40/2.8 rollei sonnar

Chinatown Scenes

Nikon D100, Nikkor 24mm f2.8 AF

Last Sunday we went for a walk in Chinatown, and I decided to bring the D100 and Nikkor 24mm for a change. I wanted to shoot with a 35mm FOV (35mm equiv.) and also to exercise the old D100. I have to say that after shooting with mostly my Mu-43 gear for over a year, the D100 felt like a massive beast. And I was only using a lightweight 24mm AF prime lens on it. I must be getting old :).

This first picture is not in Chinatown. It was in the Sunset District, and was kind of a 'warm up' shot. Does anyone else do 'warm up' shots?

The Sunset is known for its pastel colored homes, and here we have some pastel mixed with weeds and old rusty gas meters:

Gail poses in front of the famous Chinatown Gate. She's holding a SF tour book, and a Starbucks coffee. Yes, we often look like tourists in our own town, especially this day because she decided to do part of a walking tour that was suggested in that book just for fun:

This is an old, dingy stairway in a building on Stockton Street. We were on our way up to the 4th floor Buddhist Temple where there was a big sign that says: "Do not touch anything", and a xeroxed picture of a Nikon DSLR with a bold slash across it (no pictures allowed). It was eerily quiet compared to the busy street below:

Waiting on a red light at an intersection:

Fast paced shoppers in action:

It was hot in the sun that day. This young mom faced her child away from the sun while waiting for (probably) Grandma to finish shopping:

To me, the faces here reveal, a mother who is pleased to be out and about, and a daughter who feels a sense of obligation to take her out:

"_RIENTAL HOUSE of BEAUTY". I've been photographing this same building for years, and it has looked the same for years, sort of an urban decay or historical preservation depending on how you look at it:

--Warren

Maple Leaves

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 14-45mm

This was taken last fall, but I'm just getting around to posting it now.

--Warren

Dragonfly

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 14-45mm

I liked the shadow that it cast on the metal bar that it was perched on.

--Warren

Hello, It's Me

Panasonic DMC-G1, Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8

Photo by Gail.

More goodness from the Hexanon 40mm, we were at Yerba Buena Gardens where I handed Gail the camera and told her to take my picture.

She was not used to the manual focus, but one of the three pictures that she took of me came out sharp. She took the shot horizontally, and I cropped it to portrait format in post-processing.

--Warren

First thanks Warren for his comment on my last post. Here are two more panoramas from my L.A. trip. The one on top is a garden in Getty Center. It is the most beautiful garden I ever visited. The bottom one is Disney Concert Hall. In 1997, I was enchanted by a photo of the similar looking Guggenheim Museum in Bilbo. At the present of DCH, I was awestruck.

Antelope Valley

This wonderful display of wild poppy was taken on April 1, 2011. Location is less than a mile from Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. There were not many poppy flowers in the reserve itself, many visitors and I left disappointed; very fitting on an April Fool's Day. But I spotted this patch from a high point, then found my way there by remembering shapes and colors of nearby hills.