early morning, Northbeach, S.F.

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photo by Donald Kinney

The Graffeo Coffee Roasting Company keeps this oversized but un-real cup of 'jo on display -- just for me so I can shoot it early on Sunday mornings when they're closed. I've never been able to pass up a snap, and don't worry -- I usually tote my own paper cup of 7-11's finest.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Upper Grant Street is a bit under-the-radar, but finding music is easy at any time other than 7AM. Yawn...



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photo by Donald Kinney

Upper Grant Street also has what look like hospitable-looking restaurants.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Memories from the past. Yep, flashbacks from that last acid trip linger on.



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photo by Donald Kinney

That's my Northbeach in San Francisco. I'll leave the lights on for you.



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Gov. Brown; please don't close China Camp

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photo by Donald Kinney

It is unknown if Governor Brown will actually go through with his plans shut down China Camp State Park (and three other parks in the area) as part of his cost-cutting measures -- I wouldn't think it would save all that much money. And it's taken the smile off the face of the park worker who cleans the toilets and cleans up the area in the morning -- he'd be out of a job.



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photo by Donald Kinney

But China Camp isn't going anywhere, whether they close the gate or not.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Open or not, this old boat will continue to fall apart as it counts the days.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And the only remaining resident of China Camp, Frank Quan, isn't going anywhere soon. Recently he put a new fiberglass bottom on his dinghy, so now even in his '80's, he still has sights on pulling shrimp out of the bay.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And yes, Frank Quan still sets a net -- these days just at the end of the dock. The catch of Bay Shrimp is small compared to 60 or 120 years ago. Water that normally would flow from the Sierra is largely diverted for agricultural uses in the Central Valley. With less fresh water to flush out San Pablo Bay (the upper thumb of San Francisco Bay) the salinity of the bay has increased, which is something Bay Shrimp do not like.



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clouds, on a grand scale

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photo by Donald Kinney

That's the top of the poetically-gifted Elephant Mountain, and an equally poetically-gifted cloud filled sky. One of those views where everything just seems to rhyme, with big stories to tell from little bitty words.



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photo by Donald Kinney

I've been thinking about panoramas recently. Photoshop has a neat tool for assembling and stitching a series of panned shots into one. I wasn't using a level tripod so I didn't do a very good job with this.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And here's the same set of four photos, not stitched together but placed side by side.



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Oh, did I mention that the sun and clouds can put on quite a show?
Quite poetic, I think.



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the lake at Nicasio, west Marin County

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photo by Donald Kinney

The reservoir out near the tiny burg of Nicasio was built in the 1950's as part of Marin County's fresh water system. In the right light the lake can be rather beautiful.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Sometimes beauty speaks more eloquently than words.



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S.F. Museum of Modern Art - SF MOMA for short

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photo by Donald Kinney

I am a proud card carrying member of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, so on Tuesday I made a pilgrimage to see the historical Eadweard Muybridge collection -- studies of the ambulation of horses and man and that sort of thing.

I also visited the Stein collection exhibit on the fourth floor; with more Picassos and other fabulous artists than-a-person-can-hake-a-stick-at.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Usually I can't get out of SF MOMA without at least once remarking that "I could have done that" had I just come up with the idea. I suppose following through with the idea is the hard part.



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The same letter, over and over and over again.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Jumbled text with a definite space problem.



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photo by Donald Kinney

From the information next to Warhol's artwork of Elizabeth Taylor:

This image of a young Elizabeth Taylor on horese-back is from the 1944 movie National Velvet. Warhol covered the tall, imposing canvas--one of his largest--with silver paint, evoking the "silver screen", and then printed the rich, black images side by side in rows of varying length. He combined the natural manipulations so that each picture of Taylor would have it's own unique character, emphasis, and resonance. The repeated images suggest the flickering glamour of a Hollywood film, composed of thousands of celluloid stills that change only minutely from one to the next, as well as the ephemeral nature of celebrity, a subject Warhol frequently explored. The first iteration at the upper left is the most complete and photographic, while the last one at the lower right is like a faded ghost.

Well folks, that paragraph above has got to be one of the silliest explanations of the way Warhol worked. Most likely he didn't intend for the images to grow progressively weaker -- that's just the way it goes when you're doing silkscreen printing and your screen starts to clog up. Oh yeah, this was an ambitious project -- the panel is 12 feet high by 8 feet wide, with fifty or sixty of the same Elizabeth Taylor print repeated in rows and columns -- not completely filled in or finished. Anybody with a little silkscreening knowledge could have done it, had they come up with the idea and followed through with it. Again, following through is the hard part.



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The rather primitive image on the right is by Arshile Gorky, American, 1904-1948, titled "Enigmatic Combat" 1937. And again, I probably could have done that if I had come up with idea and had the motivation to follow through with it.

I'm on my way to get my head x-rayed this morning. Someone dear to me said I needed to get my head examined. I'm going to follow through with it.




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vicinity of -- S.F. Museum of Modern Art

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photo by Donald Kinney

Oh yeah, you're going to see my post from SF MOMA tomorrow, but today lets look around the immediate vicinity, such as this theater building across Second Street in Yerba Buena Center.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Easy to see how the architect was having fun with shapes and values.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Catty-corner across Mission Street and over near Market Street is the often photographed Jewish Museum. I still haven't been inside, so stand by for a blog post on this mysterious place housed in this most unusual building.



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Yerba Buena Center has a whole lot of very busy fountains -- all more than willing to put on quite a show, just for me, but there's plenty to go around.



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outstanding in it's field

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photo by Donald Kinney

In an earlier day, and not too long ago really, this old truck served as a signpost for Port Sonoma; a marina at the mouth of the Petaluma River. This area is the extreme northern bit of San Francisco Bay and is more precisely named San Pablo Bay.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Really nice lines, I think. Sculpted to perfection. I can see the love.



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Of course we have "idiot-lights" in our modern vehicles these days to keep track of our water-temperature and oil-pressure, but I wouldn't mind going back to the old way, I suppose. Putt, putt...



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photo by Donald Kinney

I think what happens is that people of the "rural-persuasion" sometimes will add a bit of rust-prevention to their vehicles if they have any paint left over from any other job. Accidental artwork, I'd say.



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visiting the Rednecks of Petaluma

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photo by Donald Kinney

This, being a blog -- I can say things that might be best left unspoken, but let me tell you that Petaluma, California, might be your typical ham-and-egger American town but it is also full of Rednecks -- the type that would blast ducks out of the sky with a shotgun.

And it's hardly a fair fight. "Hundreds of super-propelled bits of round metal all headed for my butt if I don't get out of here". "Quack".



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I'm familiar with this area and the people who live here, and I have to say I like the area much better than the people. Did I mention that they're mostly Rednecks? They blast ducks out of the sky with shotguns.



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Dick Cheney is a Redneck too -- he likes to go hunting. You probably remember his hunting accident a while back where he blasted his hunting mate, Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, in the side of the face with "hundreds of super-propelled bits of round metal". Whittington survived.



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The accidental beauty of a Redneck's barn.



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And every Redneck needs a red roof on his barn. Amen.



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San Francisco's City Hall

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photo by Donald Kinney

It's absolutely surreal how beautiful San Francisco's City Hall is. Until about four years ago I had never been inside.


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S.F. City Hall -- Happy Birthday S.F. Mike

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photo by Donald Kinney

I've never dedicated a set of photos to anybody before, but I'm sending these photos of San Francisco's City Hall out to my good buddy S.F. Mike who does the S.F. Civic Center blog. Mike's beat is the goings-on of the Civic Center area and his trio of specialties are the symphony and the opera, plus a tough critique on the art in the various museums of San Francisco. Mike also covers the politics of the area -- I remember meeting him four years ago at a protest rally on the steps of City Hall.



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Oh man, let me tell you -- City Hall is so beautiful I can hardly stand it.



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photo by Donald Kinney

A whole lot of work went into this, and they did it all for me.



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I was at City Hall to say to hello to Julie Michelle, San Francisco's pre-eminent people photographer. Julie does the amazingly successful I Live Here S.F. project where San Franciscans with a story write it and Julie documents their life. Julie's major show was last November at SOMArts -- it featured over 200 people she has done pieces on and the show was a smashing success.

Currently, Julie Michelle's images from the I Live Here S.F. project are on display in the various Supervisor's offices in City Hall. The subjects have been grouped by district and hang in their respective Supervisor's office. Quite a clever idea, I think.

If you plan to be in downtown San Francisco in the next month you should make a point of dropping by the JAW DROPPING City Hall -- go up to the second floor to the Supervisor's offices and just walk in and look around for Julie's amazing people photography. She has a talent I can only dream of, and the best part of the whole deal is that she's my friend, good buddy, and fellow photographer. I'll have more reporting on Julie's show in a few days.



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the awesome Lagunitas Creek

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photo by Donald Kinney

Gotta tell you, my beloved Lagunitas Creek is at it's peak in beauty right now -- the past couple times I've been out there have been just delightful.



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photo by Donald Kinney

When winter rains stop the amount of water in Lagunitas Creek is largely dependent on how much flow our water district releases from Kent Dam, a few miles upstream.

Lagunitas Creek is all about the plight of the diminishing numbers of native Coho Salmon. Their numbers have slipped from a migration of thousands to less than a few hundred today. This is prime spawning ground for the Coho Salmon and after rains in January they return to spawn, completing a three year life cycle.



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Luckily our Coho Salmon are protected under the federal endangered species act, and believe me, several agencies and public concerns keep a close eye on Lagunitas Creek -- I think it must be the most studied creek on the coast. Scientists are always out there collecting water samples and checking whatever it is they check.

If you'd like to see more of the Lagunitas Creek, click here for 60 images on what I call my "big" site.

And click here if you'd like to see a short YouTube video I put together a year or two ago.

And click here for another short Lagunitas Creek video.

Go make some popcorn, come back, click here so you can watch yet a third short video of my beloved Lagunitas Creek.

Here's the scoop on these videos...
A year or two ago my camera got stuck in the repair shop for an extended period of time, and I just about went nuts not having it. To relieve the pain I bought a camcorder and found that although it was fun and a new technique, I really missed my still camera, the Canon5D. Recently my camera had to go back to Canon repair but this time they got it back to me quickly, albeit a hefty price for the repair.



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on a grand scale

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photo by Donald Kinney

Well this has been a busy week and right now I'm running out of gas -- just not enough time for sleep. I've been getting to bed really late and then getting up really early -- on Wednesday morning it was to go chase the sunrise. But the sunrise was just not happening -- the cloud bank was too low, totally obscuring anything that might be rendered colorful.

So I turned around and started coming on home. And then I saw it -- the moon over my beloved Mount Tamalpais -- no time to set up a tripod -- this was going to have to be one of those "out the car door shots". Snap. Had I been just a minute earlier I could have had a bit more clouds impinging on the moon. Had I some time to fool around I may have been able to get my exposure and contrast right (maybe a set of HDR exposures) so I could have rendered some detail on the surface of the moon.



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photo by Donald Kinney

That little finger of land in the distance is Point Reyes.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And here's a similar shot but made into sort of a panorama.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And that's a rainbow -- a SURE sign that the rapture is going to happen and the world as we know it is going to end on Saturday.



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