57th Annual North Beach Festival

57th Annual North Beach Festival, a set on Flickr.

North Beach is no longer the haven for poets, free thinkers, and other artists that it was in the 60's.

The North Beach Festival, now in its 57th year, has echos from that era but those echos are faint and perhaps unintelligible to those who did not live through those tumultuous times.

The Beat Museum is wonderfully quaint and evoked some distant memories making me think I might read Kerouac's "On the Road" and see if it was still relevant. Maybe not.

Coit Tower is still relevant and though I've been in the area many times had not seen the W.P.A. murals until now. Worth a return to the SFAI gallery to see Diego Rivera's murals.

And if you visit North Beach, try The Stinking Rose for dinner. The food's tasty and the atmosphere is great (lot's of garlic!!).

Sketches and Skies of San Pablo Ridge

Sketches and Skies of San Pablo Ridge, a set on Flickr.

When the skies become a canvas with clouds as the paint, a photographer can only hope to capture the art and perhaps reinterpret it.

Is this just photographing someone else's (Nature) art? Perhaps, but I'll still continue to try the impossible which is to capture the form, light, and shadow and perhaps the feeling of nature's art.

Using Photomatix for Non-HDR Merging

Photomatix is stand-alone software that is used to merge bracketed exposures into High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. Such images have a range of tonalities that exceed what would otherwise be captured by a camera and can be quite useful with high contrast light. But Photomatix can also be used experimentally for non-HDR applications, such as merging two or more images with different subject matter.

(If you are new to HDR, see my tutorial HDR Basics )

For example, in this image of Dance Bliss by artist Marco Cochrane I wanted to have her dancing with herself. This can be accomplished several ways, including using the Apply Image filter in Photoshop. But I did not care for the results that much, so tried merging in Photomatix.

Here is another shot from a different angle. Note that the dancer is in a space that has little detail in the first image.

Using Photomatix, I merged the two images but felt it needed something to indicate motion.

That motion came from an image created by zooming for a 2.5S exposure.

Merging the two versions of Dance Bliss with the zoomed shot produced Dancing Women:

Note that for this merge of 3 images, the boxes for Align Source Images and Reduce Ghosting Artifacts were unchecked. If you try to align the images, the software may try to align things that shouldn't (and maybe that's ok) and you get a cropped version like this

When Night Falls - A Brief Introduction to the math of time lapse

Time lapse was once a cumbersome process requiring a timing device attached to the camera. Many digital cameras now come equipped with the timing device built-in. Termed an intervalometer, settings for the time interval, how many images to take, and whether to start at a specified time or immediately can all be set in-camera. The equipment for timelapse photography is now no more complicated that what equipment is required for the subject matter, though a good sturdy tripod is a must.

Setting the time interval (T in seconds) and the number of frames (F) to shoot is a matter of knowing
1) the length of the assembled video (L in seconds)
2) the compression factor (CF)
3) the video image rate (R in frames per second)

For example, if you show your video using an image rate of 20 frames/second (R = 20 fps) and want to speed things by a factor of 40, then you will be shooting one frame every 2 seconds. In equation form, T =CF/R.

If your finished video will be one minute in length (= 60 s), then you will need 20 fps X 60 s = 1200 frames, or
F = RxL

Alternately,
F = LxCF/T = (60 s)x(40)/(2 s/frame) = 1200 frames


When Night Falls was shot with a 6s interval between images and used 550 frames. The video image rate is 10 fps. So R = 10 fps, T = 6s, and F = 550 frames. Using the equations, the compression factor, CF = RT = 10x6 = 60 and L = F/R = 550/10 = 55 seconds in length.

In the finished video, watch for events you may not normally notice in either straight video or single images.

The Hunt for Blossoms and Thorns

In the City of Richmond (CA) is a place time has passed when farms and fishing were a way of life. Managed by three Japanese-American families the domestic flower industry has fallen on hard times unable to compete with the cheaper imports. Today the greenhouses stand as shadows of the past while the roses are surreally viable even bursting through the broken panes on the greenhouse roofs.

HDR Basics - Using Photomatix and Removing Ghosts

HDR Basics Using Photomatix -

Playland at the Beach Lives On

Playland at the Beach Lives On, a set on Flickr.

Remember San Francisco's Playland at the Beach? You don't? Oh well, you're probably a lot younger than I and can be forgiven.

While Playland no longer exists, having gone seedy and even scary in the 60's and then got itself replaced with condos and a supermarket when no one thought it worth the face lift, some of it lives on. Like at the Musee Mechanique at San Francisco's Pier 43.5 and Playland Not at the Beach in El Cerrito on the east side of the bay.

Both are worth a visit. The Musee Mechanique is free and fun though you might just drop a few quarters into a machine or two to see how they work and take you to a yesterday when fun was a much simpler and cheaper endeavor.