Here’s a quick grab shot I took with my iPhone 5s while joining Doug Kaye for our photo walk in San Francisco.
Processed using Lightroom 5 and VSCO Film 04.
Category: iPhone 5s
I’m often blown away by the quality of the images that my iPhone 5s captures. This is one of those examples – shot on New Year’s Day morning at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
Post-processed to monochrome in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC with a bit of platinum toning applied.
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The Fan in the Window
There’s a wonderful Japanese restaurant in Menlo Park’s Sharon Heights Shopping Center – Mitsunobu. The windows at Mitsunobu have these beautiful wood inlays with lovely curves.
This is a shot snapped quickly at lunch using my iPhone 5s – post-processed using Picturesque and Instagram. Nothing fancy – but I find it pretty none the less with the beautiful color and texture in the wood and the abstract of the screen behind!
One of our favorite places for photography in San Francisco is Embarcadero Center. The Center’s architecture is very special and unique – with lots of lovely nooks and crannies along with beautiful vistas of the four tall buildings that make up the core of the center.
There are several spiral staircases within Embarcadero Center that make wonderful subjects for photographers. A couple outside and another couple inside the buildings. As the light shifts, the outdoor ones take on a variety of moods – sometimes they’re in bright light/shadow. Other times, when it’s foggy and overcast, there’s a soft light aspect that can be special.
Yesterday, we were on our way to see the movie Tim’s Vermeer at the Embarcadero Center Cinema when I walked by this particular staircase and captured it with my iPhone 5s. I brought it into Photoshop CC and tweaked it a bit using both Topaz Simplify 4 and the Oil Paint filter to add a bit of interesting texture. The image deserves more time to make it even better – but this quick, first cut version captured my eye!
We headed up to San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center Cinema today for the noon showing of “Tim’s Vermeer” – a wonderful documentary about how Tim Jenison, a Texas based inventor, spent almost five years working on figuring out how Vermeer was able to paint his beautiful images so precisely. It’s a great movie – we really enjoyed it – and this location has great seats, etc. that makes seeing a film there quite a pleasure.
After the movie, we headed to The Slanted Door at the Ferry Building for a delightful late lunch. The Slanted Door’s Saturdays are extremely busy – so reservations were impossible – but we were able to get a couple of seats at the bar after a 20 minute wait. While we were waiting, I shot this image of the oranges with my iPhone 5s. Such a delight!
Here’s a quick iPhone 5s grab shot as we were walking along the Embarcadero to Pier 24.
Tweaked in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC – with a touch of platinum toning applied.
My friend Doug Kaye and I recently visited Pier 24 to see the current exhibition: “A Sense of Place”. We’d been wanting to go for several months but it’s a hard place to get into. They limit attendance and require an advance (but free) reservation. Only 20 people go in at one of three times each day. Once you’re inside, you really appreciate the lack of any crowds – so the reservation process definitely helps create a much higher quality experience. We got lucky one day and found a couple of slots open.
The space inside is just perfect for photography. The provide you with a booklet that provides the details for each photo – no little signs on the walls next to the photos.
My favorite photographers from the current exhibition are: Todd Hido, Stephen Shore, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Lee Friedlander, Eric William Carroll, Paul Graham and Rinko Kawauichi. Beautiful work from each of them! Doug and I spent the most time exploring a Vancouver nightclub shot by Jeff Wall – In Front of a Nightclub – a fascinating work! From a distance, the image seems flat but when you get up closer – within say 5 feet or so – it begins to really show some depth. Very fun!
Here’s another image shot inside Pier 24 – these are street shots of New York City by Paul Graham. I like how some of the images are mounted low. Graham’s using the “stage” technique – seeing first an interesting background and waiting for it to fill with subjects of interest.
On Friday, Doug Kaye and I were on our way to an appointment to visit Pier 24. If you’ve not been to Pier 24, you HAVE to go. A beautiful experience.
I shot this with my iPhone 5s as we walked along the Embarcadero. Pier 24 is jutting into the image from the right. The pigeon caught my eye!
Converted to monochrome in Lightroom 5 using VSCO Film.
One of my favorite local spots in Menlo Park is Cafe Borrone. I’m often there early for breakfast and sometimes, with colleagues, for lunch. Great food, great location, beautiful light, art, music. It’s a delight.
Today I headed over to Cafe Borrone for an early lunch – actually breakfast – and, as I was leaving, captured this image of the plaza with my iPhone 5s.
On my way around the corner, I noticed that the new area soon to become Borrone Marketbar was beginning to be revealed – and I snapped this shot below. Looking forward to the launch of the Marketbar! You can read more about the Marketbar here.
My photo buddy Doug Kaye captured this shot of me yesterday on New Year’s Day as we were shooting the Fog Bridge outside of San Francisco’s Exploratorium.
I don’t seem to be the happy street photographer in this image – but it’s not exactly a posed shot! When I’m out shooting, I’ve typically got one camera on my hip (a Fujifilm X-E2 in this image) and my iPhone 5s in my shirt pocket. I regularly flip between them – depending upon what I see, a need for speed or a desire to slow down and work a subject. Sometimes I’ll have a third camera either on my belt or on my left hip.
In this image, I’d just taken a couple of shots with my Fujifilm X-E2 (see below). I let the Fuji fall to my hip, pulled my iPhone out of my shirt pocket and then turned to see what Doug was doing – bang! – he captured this shot! Good fun!
Doug has a new Sony a7 and a vintage Leica Elmar-M 135mm lens that he recently bought used. It’s a pretty magical lens on the new Sony full frame sensor! Here’s an image I shot of Doug shooting with this camera/lens out on San Francisco’s Pier 7.
This image has been cropped a bit more from Doug’s original – and a touch of platinum toning was applied in Photoshop CC.
Here’s one of the Fujifilm X-E2 shots I took just before turning to look at Doug – tweaked a bit in Lightroom 5:
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