Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place & home

Posts tagged ‘Bay Area’

BART El Cerrito Plaza, BART, El Cerrito Plaza, El Cerrito, East Bay, Bay Area, San Francisco, California, United States, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: RTW10, EastBay

10 years ago, I began an around-the-world (RTW) journey lasting 389 consecutive days, from 24 December 2011 to 15 January 2013 inclusive.

31 Dec 2011.

I’m in the Bay Area in northern California. After leaving behind years of science, I didn’t know what was in store for the future, except a year out on the road, fixed only by an RTW-ticket itinerary. At daybreak on New Year’s Eve day, I accompanied a friend who was flying from San Francisco airport back to family home in Canada. We began at Bay Area Rapid Station (BART) station El Cerrito Plaza, where I made this image of an incoming BART train in front of a spectacular early-winter morning sky. I took this visual as a good sign of things to come.

I made the photo above on 31 Dec 2011 with a Canon EOS450D (Rebel XSi) and these settings: 1/25-sec, f/2.8, ISO100, and 50mm focal length (80mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-lvN.

AT+T Park, San Francisco, CA, USA

Fotoeins Friday: Baseball, America’s pastime

I’ve always had a great fondness for baseball, even for a lad from Vancouver. I loved the gentle ebb-and-flow and the give-and-take of the game. I’ve fond memories of watching the Montreal Expos on Canada’s CBC, with play-by-play from Dave van Horne and Duke Snider, and the call of players like Steve Rogers, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, and Gary Carter. The addition of teams to distant Toronto and nearby Seattle provided more baseball to watch and follow.

I remember exactly where I was when the Toronto Blue Jays won the 1992 World Series and the 1993 World Series. And yes, I’m still upset the Expos never got a chance to play in the 1994 playoffs as one of the favourites, who were 34 games over 500.

Coming to this beautiful San Francisco venue to watch baseball feels like a great privilege with names like Willie McCovey, for whom the adjacent cove is named, and Wille Mays, for whom the front plaza of the stadium is named. I made the above photo from the upper deck at a Giants game in AT&T Park.

In the photo above, the Cincinnati Reds’ infield players are shifted towards right field to defend against San Francisco’s left-handed ‘pull’ hitter Barry Bonds. Cincinnati went to to win the game 6-3 (game boxscore).

Have you visited San Francisco? What are your highlights from “The City by the Bay”? Please leave your comments below!

I made the photo above on 24 August 2006. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com, and also appears on Travel Photo Thursday for Nancie McKinnon’s Budget Travelers Sandbox.

San Francisco: Ocean Beach, alone & deep in thought

In March 2012, I visited Ocean Beach in San Francisco, Caifornia. What’s left of the Sutro Baths invite people to walk in, through, and around the ruins. A benefit to visiting, even on a very windy day, is the proximity to the water, the Pacific Ocean.

Ocean Beach, Sutro Baths, San Francisco, CA, USA

Standing a few metres away from the water, I saw a woman standing alone in front of the surf. Although it was windy and some surf was reaching the ruins, the woman stood still for minutes, looking out into the ocean.

Briefly, I feared she was contemplating a jump into the ocean. But my fears were unfounded, as she eventually walked away and back up the slope towards the parking lot.

Whatever she was thinking, I hope she found what she was looking.

I made this photo at Ocean Beach in San Francisco on 18 March 2012. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com.

San Francisco: Point Reyes National Seashore

My friend, Bill, suggested a trip north to the Point Reyes National Seashore, about 30 miles (50 kilometres) northwest from San Francisco. A worry was the weather which in the middle of winter can get foggy and windy. The National Park Service description states:

(The Point Reyes Lighthouse …) still stands in its original location, having weathered over 135 years at what is considered to be the windiest, foggiest location on the US west coast.

Not entirely encouraging.

But on this New Year’s Day, the sun was out, with temperatures in the low- to mid-60s F (+15 to +18C), a good breeze, and no fog in sight, providing ideal conditions to hang out along the Pacific Coast.

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San Francisco, California, United States, fotoeins.com

San Francisco on the last day of 2011

Above/featured: BART station El Cerrito Plaza, at sunrise.

Dropping off my friend at 830am at SFO Airport on their way to México was a great opportunity to have a look at the airport itself. Even better was catching some visuals within the city on a relatively quiet day …

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Art day in San Francisco

29 December 2011.

It’s always gratifying and enlightening to discover “new” photographers. I saw for the first time photographs by Fred Lyon, Fan Ho, and Francesca Woodman, even though their work has been around for some time.

After feasting on dim sum in Oakland, we waddled onto a BART train to head across the Bay and into the City. The first stop was 49 Geary. How had I not discovered these galleries in previous visits to San Francisco? After roaming through a couple of galleries, we arrived at the Modernbook Gallery, where I learned about Fred Lyon and Fan Ho.

Fourth-generation San Francisco native Fred Lyon photographed a diverse set of subjects including work with the U.S. Navy, advertising, design, fashion, food, travel, and wine. His photos of people and daily life provide a portrait of San Francisco in the 1940s and 1950s, as published in “San Francisco Then”. You can discover his work here, here, or with a short 3-minute video here.

Based out of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and California, Fan Ho is a long-time photographer, actor, and director. Mostly self-taught, he photographed people and daily life in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s. At the risk of overusing the phrase, one look at Fan Ho’s work may remind you of Henri Cartier-Bresson and the “decisive moment”; it’s about being patient and about being at the right place at the right time.

We made the short walk to the Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) where we witnessed the photographic work by Francesca Woodman. I think her work is amazing, but two obvious questions arise:

  1. Is my impression of her work coloured by her suicide?
  2. Would we have even heard of or known about her work?

There are no easy answers. The SFMOMA’s own description of the exhibit reads:

SFMOMA: Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was an artist decisively of her time, yet her photographs retain an undeniable immediacy. Thirty years after her death, they continue to inspire audiences with their dazzling ambiguities and their remarkably rich explorations of self-portraiture and the body in architectural space. This retrospective, the first in the United States in more than two decades, explores the complex body of work produced by the young artist until her suicide at age 22. Together with Woodman’s artist books and videos, the photographs on view form a portrait of an artist engaged with major concerns of her era — femininity and female subjectivity, the nature of photography — but devoted to a distinctive, deeply personal vision.

ArtInfo has a story here, and the SF Gate/The Chronicle also writes about the exhibition.

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San Francisco, California, United States, fotoeins.com

San Francisco: Ferry Building

Above/featured: 8am.

San Francisco is one of my favourite cities to visit, and, if you haven’t been, the city should be on your list, too.

Every time I’m in San Francisco, one of my goals is to visit the Ferry Building – whether it’s to take a ferry across the Bay, sample some food, or have a coffee and watch people, it’s a beautiful way to spend the afternoon, rain or shine.

Built in 1898, surviving the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, and having endured being “hidden” behind the double-deck Embarcadero Skyway from 1957 until its demolition in 1991, the Ferry Building is not only a landmark for visitors, but is also to local residents a hub for transport and commerce.

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San Francisco: Port of SF, Pier 14

San Francisco’s present-day waterfront and port facility remains important as

… a public enterprise committed to promoting a balance of maritime, recreational, industrial, transportation, public access and commercial activities on a self-supporting basis through appropriate management and development of the waterfront for the benefit of the public.”

At a length of 194 metres or 637 feet, Pier 14 on The Embarcadero reopened in 2006 as a pedestrian-pier built on top of the breakwater which was used to protect ferries entering the nearby ferry terminal.

With mostly clear skies on a crisp quiet late-morning, I made my way to Pier 14 and snapped the following photos.

Pier14 Embarcadero SanFranciscoPier14 Embarcadero SanFranciscoPier14 Embarcadero SanFranciscoPier14 Embarcadero SanFrancisco

Or perhaps you came from the nearby Ferry Building, about which I write here.

I made the photographs above on 28 December 2011 with the Canon EOS450D (XSi) camera and the 18-55mm kit-lens. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-1de.

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