Lagunitas Creek, reflecting abstractly, part 2 of 2

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I never actually get tired of shooting my beloved Lagunitas Creek, and there is a wealth of material to shoot, in different seasons and in different lights.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

But I'm heading out on "vacation" for the entire month of September, starting tomorrow. I'm going to pretty much "wing" my trip, but first I plan to head down the coast of California. I owe Point Lobos a visit and it has been years since I've been through Big Sur. From there will come a long and boring stretch across California to the Owens Valley. First on my stop is the Alabama Hills, where the bouldered scenery of this area appeared in many of our childhood cowboy movies. From there it is Bristlecone Pine--last year a storm prevented me from reaching this destination. Death Valley is next along the way. From there, the Nevada border isn't far, and I plan to take a meander up Highway50; the loneliest highway in America. I do not plan to actually visit any brothels along the way (((my mother would be proud))) but I bet I'll come back with a couple snaps.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Sooooooooooooo, what are YOU doing to do for a whole month without me? Well, fear not -- I have scheduled 30 posts for the month of September that will feature not only one of my old photos, but "re-runs" of KittyBLOG in memory of my beloved cat who passed away a year or so ago. I banged-out KittyBLOG each morning for six or seven years--and always with Kitty on my lap, making typing as difficult as possible.




click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I'll be back on October 1, hopefully with a ton of new photos from my vacation adventure.


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

Lagunitas Creek, reflecting abstractly, part 1 of 2

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Well, take your pick--this is could either a Rorschach ink-blot test, or two creek reflection photos paired together to form the abstract pattern.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

The power to turn tall trees upside down and still do a swirly flourish.
And a tree with bark scarred from logs and branches bashing against it in winter storms.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Colorful abstract patterns on the surface.
Never a dull moment or color on my beloved Lagunitas Creek.
More tomorrow...


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

sculpture at Land's End

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Gnarled and twisted by the wind, this Cypress, spews forth its limbs in a most artful manner.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

And if it were only just art and not a chilling record of the unforgivable past.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

"The Holocaust" by George Segal

We will never forget the genocidal slaughter of six million Jews, including one and a half million children, in the Nazi Holocaust of 1933-1945.

We will never forget the cruel apathy of a world which allowed that Holocaust and the deliberate murder of millions of other people to happen.

We will never forget the martyrs at that vil abyss in human history. Nor will we forget those Jews and the righteous of all faiths, who resisted and fought that evil.

In the emory of those martyrs and fighters, we pledge our lives to the creation of a world in which such evil and such apathy will not be tolerated.

It is with that memory and that resolve that we dedicate this memorial.

In remembrance is the secret of redemption. Dedicated November 7, 1984. (near Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco)

CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

sunrise at China Camp, once again

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I don't think I ever made a conscious decision to start photographing sunrises, it is just one of those targets that draw me--like a flying insect to an outdoor lightbulb, so to speak. Zap...



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

The scenery and atmospherics are nice, but birds are the icing on the cake.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

A zillion volunteer oats enthusiastically greet the big yellow ball as it pops up from beyond the horizon. Click...


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

do you know the way to Napa Wine Country?

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Well, the first thing you want to do is hijack a rusty old Dodge.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Make sure it still has enough ummpff...
This one has a speedometer that goes to 80MPH. I thought it might do..



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I thought I might get back late. Headlamps would be important.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

The temptation to steal a bunch or take a taste was great. But I resisted.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I finally arrived at my destination. When playing cards with my buddies, a sharp mind and a clean-conscience helps raise myself to their level.


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

Larkspur Landing, Drake and ferries

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Dennis Patton's metal sculpture is huge, and represents explorer Sir Francis Drake who discovered this area we call Marin, although nobody can prove exactly where Drake first came ashore.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

source: Wikipedia

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral (1540 – 27 January 1596) was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the second circumnavigation of the world, from 1577 to 1580. He died of dysentery in January 1596 after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.

His exploits were legendary, making him a hero to the English but a pirate to the Spaniards to whom he was known as El Draque, Draque being the Spanish pronunciation of "Drake". His name in Latinised form was Franciscus Draco (Francis the Dragon). King Philip II was said to have offered a reward of 20,000 ducats, about £4 million (US$6.5M) by modern standards, for his life.

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

For moving people and freight, trains just make good sense. A BIG mistake to let them fall into disrepair in favor of our individual gas-guzzlers.

But construction of a 38 mile segment for the new SMART train route from Santa Rosa to San Rafael is expected to be nearing completion in 2016. A total of 70 miles will open eventually with a route from Cloverdale to the north and the Larkspur Ferry Terminal to the south.  It will co$t a bundle.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Big secret here--I've never ridden on a Golden Gate Ferry. When I admit that to a "local" they look at me like I am some kind of a nut.
That's San Quentin Prison in lower left.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I think the ferry terminal has nice tubular architecture. I spiced the colors up a bit in Photoshop.


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

round, vertical, square, and thin

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Who would have thunk... A round image... My first...
Lenses see circularly--it is only the configuration of the camera that gives the "box". The eye sees circularly too--I need to make more circular photos.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I seem to be turning my camera "sideways" a lot more these days.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Squares are cool... Facebook works better with square photos (maybe you've seen how they crop the ends off horizontals). SmartPhones produce square images. I predict square photos will be the wave of the future.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

About a year ago I had the opportunity to do an hour-long critique with Brooks Jensen who publishes LensWork Magazine and is a master of the lens. He went through a stack of my prints, commenting and critiquing.

Among a myriad of suggestions, one important thing Brooks pointed out was how many of my photos could be improved by cropping off their tops and bottoms. So now, I have a new shape--"thin". Actually forces the eye to sweep across the image.


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

a visit to Legion of Honor, San Francisco

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I caught wind that there was a Man Ray / Lee Miller exhibit at the Legion of Honor, and although camera restrictions prevent me from showing you any of the fabulous examples from that exhibit, I visited my usual favorites, in and around the museum.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

A while back my good buddy Michael Strickland of SF Civic Center fame supplied details on this rather odd sculpture which looks to me as if it has been banished to a fairly hidden location on the south side of the museum:

"The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental sculpture in marble now in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by sea serpents."

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

The Dead Soldier, 1789, by Joseph Wright, English, 1734-1794

...the parent mourn'd her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolv'd in due,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave sad presage of his future years,
The child of misery, baptiz'd in tears.

The poet's forboding about the fatherless child's destiny is sidestepped by the painter. Wright focuses our attention and sensuous delicacy of the form of the pathetic young woman who grieves over the body of the father of her child. It is an intensely private scene played out against a backdrop of world events.  (Source: museum title-card)



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

(left) Bacchantes, ca. 1745, by François Boucher, French 1703-1770

(right) Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland, later Marchioness Wellesley, 1791
by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, French, 1755-1842


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

art and nature of Corte Madera Slough

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Oh, we have some fine galleries of art, but I think they all weigh in light when compared to the fine art show going on in the great out-of-doors.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Photographers seldom pass up the design possibilities of mud-cracks. This panorama is 12 individual hand-held vertical images, stitched together in Photoshop.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

This is an old slough of San Francisco Bay. Over the years this large expanse of bay "muck" just to the east of Highway 101 in Corte Madera has been not only diked, drained, and filled, but also has taken on a lot of sediment washed down into the bay from gold mining operations in Sierra foothills.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Safe refuge for birds and photographers...


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

a steamy Alpine Lake on Mt. Tamalpais

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Some mornings the photographs come easier than on other days, and on Monday morning I wouldn't have been able to find a photograph if my life depended on it. I first checked the China Camp area but it was totally socked-in with fog, as was the Nicasio area. I finally pointed my vehicle towards my beloved Mount Tamalpais to see if she might be hiding something.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

To my delight, Mother Nature was putting on a bit of a light show, after all, she IS the master of atmospherics.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I was the only other human, with or without a camera, within miles...


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

Mt. Hope Cemetery, Pescadero, California

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

I had quite an adventure this past Saturday morning!
The idea was to visit foggy Cypress trees above Sutro Baths in San Francisco. But curiously, although the Golden Gate Bridge was heavily fogged-in, I couldn't find any fog for my curvy trees. Undaunted, and with the temptation of a full tank of gas, I headed down to the backroads "down the coast", just east of Highway 1.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

And of course, as you can see, I ended up at a cemetery. Mt. Hope Cemetery, Pescadero, California, about 40 miles south of San Francisco.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

The headstone on the left belongs to the remains of a child who lived 7 months and 2 days. The discovery has been haunting me since Saturday.

Photo on the right; okay, 3 guesses as to what the fellow buried under this faucet-topped monument did for a living. I'm going to guess "plumber".


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

zero-dark-thirty in the morning

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

"Calling Dr. Freud, calling Dr. Freud". "Please see the patient with Chronic Sunrise Obsession"...



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

We're looking east here, and the double peaked mountain is Mt. Diablo, which if my high-school Spanish still serves me correctly translates roughly as "Mountain of the Devil". Those lights are in Richmond, California, which holds the dubious title the 12th most violent and crime-ridden city in the United States.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Yet angelic clouds float over. Not another devilish human within miles.
Snap...


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

Buck's Landing, near China Camp

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Well, I'd like to stick around and chat, but I've got to get going...



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

...



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

...


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.

arty stuff on Mt. Tamalpais

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Horsetails, or "scouring rushes" as they are sometimes called, are fairly easy targets when I get in one of my "arty" moods. Why "scouring" rushes? Because their stems take up a lot of gritty silica from the soil. If several are gathered in a bundle and a flat surface is cut on the ends, they can be used as an abrasive scouring pad for pots and pans.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Oh yeah, leaves are easy artistic subjects also.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

And you might have your own opinion, but maybe these "Naked Ladies" are more beautiful than they are artistic--but I definitely couldn't pass up the opportunity.


CLICK for new slideshow on my "BIG" photo website.