Death Monsters

This photo was taken on a bike/running path at the Pan Handle in San Francisco. For anyone unfamiliar with the area, the Pan Handle is a small section of Golden Gate park that is surrounded on both sides by the very busy Oak and Fell Streets. As you run along this path, constant traffic is going by.
This is in an area where I personally like to go for jogs so when I first saw it I was running over top of it and thought it would be a cool shot. That's what I was going for in this shot. As you look at the image, it's framed in a way that you would see it if you were approaching it running along this path and you looked down.
I think this image has a strong social economic statement that involves aspects overpopulation and the rising trends of the SUV lifestyle (who needs an SUV in a city? If anything, everyone should use mopeds! Look at European cities).
Some minor curves adjustments were made to this image in Photoshop to increase the contrast.

you'd think she was good at guitar

This image was taken in Arles, France in a small courtyard of what was once a hospital that Vincent Van Gogh stayed in for a short while. We had seen and heard this lady playing guitar all over town, she was jumping from site to site. She had an electric guitar that was plugged in to a small battery-powered amplifier. And to be honest, she completely sucked at guitar. I'm pretty sure she had never had a guitar lesson in her entire life. But, judging by the crowd she was drawing, she must have had something else going for her- it definitely wasn't anything audible though.
My favorite thing about this photo is looking down the lineup of kids and seeing how they are dressed. How they all look similar, yet completely different. I also like the way that this image shows American influence on foreign cultures. That was definitely something we noticed in France, a lot of the music you would hear in restaurants, stores, cafes, etc. would be American tunes. This lady was trying to play some American tunes which is probably what drew the kids to her, but she was failing miserably.

love for nin

This was the first shot I took with my canon 85mm f1.8 lens. This shot was taken at f1.8 because I wanted to see how sharp the focus was at that aperture. Also I wanted to see how shallow the depth of field was and how creamy the bokeh would turn out. All in all I was satified with this shot, especially being a first(test) shot with a new lens. The NIN album was sitting on the edge of my desk and it was the first thing I saw when the lens was put on. I liked the color tones that turned out in this image as well as the different ways the lines were leading the eyes and the abstract shapes they formed. This image was not adjusted in any way (other than the added border).

the door that i missed

Unfortunately this image was not anything that i wanted it to be. It was simply a quick shot as I was walking down Fillmore street in San Francisco. After reviewing it on my computer, I wanted to go back and re-take it- but unfortunately this door art no longer exists. This is a common theme I have noticed in SF. These amazing street art pieces come up for a short period of time before they are either painted over or changed with something new. I've seen it many times. In this case, I didn't get back to the door in time to re-take the shot before it had been changed to something else.
So the shot I took had good framing and the light was perfect (i love the way the doorway and the light serves as a double-frame for the artwork) but I shot it in JPEG so I had limited options when going into the digital darkroom for the black and white conversion.
The original image was also slightly out of focus so I had to do a significant amount of sharpening to the JPEG to get the pixels tightened up. In doing so I got a bit of a grainy feel to the image and I decided to go with a high contrast b/w conversion in order to not only hide some of the graininess (which i kinda liked.. but it was way too much after the sharpening) but also bring out the light being cast and push back the doorway. The photo was taken mid-day.. probably around 2pm on a very bright San Francisco afternoon. I really wish I could re-take this image. As a result, I find myself photographing more and more street art because I see it and think about how it will probably be gone soon.
Looking back I realize that the doorframe is way too dark and I should probably try to bring back some of the detail in those blacks. Oh well, its not even the shot I wanted to begin with.

Cliché Tower

I'm trying to get away from cliché photos- but when in France, you have to take photo(s) of the tower. I did some minor tweaks in lightroom to make this one have an "antique" look to it. How cliché can you get? It was cold (about 40F) and had just rained prior to this photo.
The tower at night was by far one of the coolest structures I have seen light the night sky. I wish I had brought a tripod with me to get a really nice shot of it at night.

Welcome to the Blog

Due to popular demand, a blog has been started for digitalblindspot.
Please stay tuned.. this blog will be about photos mainly.