Scott Loftesness

California Travels

One of my favorite local blogs is California Travels by San Jose-based Tom and Margaret Husband.

Tom and Margaret do an outstanding job of sharing their adventures around the Bay Area and Northern California. Tune in to their posts for a real treat!

Canvas Print - San Francisco Skyline from Fort Point

I've not had much experience with printing photos on canvas - but recently decided to give the folks at Snapfish a try - due mostly to their Flickr integration.

The photo I tried was this New Years Day 2010 photo of the San Francisco skyline - as seen from Fort Point down by the Golden Gate Bridge:

I ordered an 8x10 canvas of this photo - and I was delighted with the result. This photo was post-processed using some of the techniques learned from Trey Ratcliff's texture tutorial - and it truly looks superb on canvas!

I've made this photo available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. You can't use this image for any commercial purposes (contact me if you want to) - but feel free to share/remix it as long as you provide attribution back to me here on my blog.

A Beautiful Evening at Baker Beach

Blue and Gold - Textures with the Canon PowerShot S90

As I mentioned earlier, on Thursday afternoon I went photowalking at Stanford with Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms.com. In spite of the drizzling weather, we had a great time photowalking Stanford - much of it spent inside Stanford Memorial Church (see the full set of photos here).

I've also been interested in Trey's use of textures in some of his HDR photos. His textures tutorial details the process he uses - based upon a set of textures he's captured on his travels around the world.

I've put together two examples of this texture technique - based on the same image - shot on New Years Day 2010 from Fort Point in San Francisco. These aren't HDR - but they were shot using the Canon PowerShot S90. The first is blue, the second is gold!

Enjoy!

A Bit of HDR - Canon S90 HDR

Yesterday, a day with some dramatic clouds here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I took the opportunity to head up to San Francisco and shoot a few HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos using my Canon PowerShot S90 - here's a link to the slideshow - and below is one of my favorites taken at the Palace of Fine Arts.

The San Francisco Chronicle

Today, the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle print edition arrived on our doorstep - as it does every morning.

But today, on the front page - and a few other section front pages - the Chronicle highlighted stories/columns that were only available in either the print edition that we had received - or in the so-called e-edition.

According to the Chronicle print edition, those stories/columns would be added to the SFGate.com edition in a few days - but they're not available there today. Ironically, one of the front page articles behind the new "print wall" was by Benny Evangelista about how companies are listening and responding to complaints from their customers on Twitter!

Since we're subscribers - and have been for years - to the print edition, I thought there would be an obvious option for us to get the corresponding e-edition for free.

No, no, no! The folks at the Chronicle have decided that we should actually pay extra for that privilege - near as I can figure. You'd think they'd offer an easy way for current print subscribers to also get the e-edition. But, it looks like they've outsourced the e-edition to a third party - who complicates the whole process significantly.

Frankly, after being treated this way, I'm tempted to just cancel the print subscription and walk away! After all, all we really want to read on Sunday is Willy Brown! One of these days, he'll have a blog and will ditch that "old media" column of his!

New Years Day 2010 at the Golden Gate Bridge

We had a quiet New Years Eve last night at home - beginning with a delightful pasta dinner - see the recipe on Scott's Kitchen!. We worked a jigsaw puzzle while watching Hulu.com's excellent coverage from Times Square in New York City - conveniently three hours ahead of our own clock. Couldn't get into the weird Anderson Cooper/Kathy Griffin coverage on CNN. Hulu was a great, high quality HD alternative - delivered, as they say, "over the top"!

This morning, we had this wonderful light overcast that seemed might make for some interesting pictures - so I slid my Canon S90 into my shirt pocket and headed north to San Francisco - initially to Inspiration Point at the Presidio (appears to be a great place for a wedding but photographically a bit of a disappointment) but then on to Fort Point, the overlook off Langdon Drive above Battery Boutelle, and an old favorite, Baker Beach. As these things go, it was a quick trip - a bit over 2-1/2 hours roundtrip.

The triptych below captures shots from each of those locations - a way for me to remember this New Years Day from each of those locations! Here's my Flickr set for these shots.

Hope you had a wonderful New Years 2010!

Merry Christmas 2009

A good friend once told me:
Slow down, get into the moment, and hold them close.

Merry Christmas!

[Photo by Scott Loftesness - Dec. 2007 at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero, San Francisco]

Remembering Ramparts...the Barb, and More!

This Sunday's New York Times Book Review has an article by Jack Shafer about "A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America" - a new book by Peter Richardson about Ramparts magazine that brought back memories of my days in Berkeley in the late 1960's.

"It was the magazine Time loved to hate, calling it “slick enough to lure the unwary and bedazzled reader into accepting flimflam as fact” in a 1967 article titled “A Bomb in Every Issue.”

Ramparts was the slick monthly that was always a treat to read. The ink didn't rub off on your fingers quite the way that the weekly Berkeley Barb's did!

Both were very much a part of the Berkeley scene in those days - along with Rolling Stone (then edited and published in San Francisco) and, hmm, what else?...oh yeah, Ralph J. Gleason's column every week in the Chronicle. Turns out Gleason also contributed to both Ramparts and Rolling Stone. Wow, those were the days!

Hidden Gems in San Francisco - Jack Early Park

Last weekend, I spent both Saturday and Sunday participating in an incredible photo workshop in San Francisco with Chris Honeysett. I'm still collecting my thoughts about the workshop and all that I learned - more to come eventually.

Today, I happened to get a Weekend Sherpa email about a walk in San Francisco that included mention of Jack Early Park. Both the Yelp reviews and the Urban Outings review of this tiny, almost hidden park just off Telegraph Hill make it sound wonderful.

It's a two-person park and certainly the best place to propose marriage in San Francisco, perhaps the best place anywhere.

Jack Early Park is now on my list for the "next time I'm shooting in San Francisco"!