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I’ve seen these a number of times at our local park, and thought they were just plain well done. I tried out a grainy black and white art filter on my E-P1, and here’s the result:  Train Drawing at the Park (San Francisco, 2010). E-P1, Lumix 20mm f/1.7, 1/200s, f/2.8, ISO 200. Part of why I take photos and post them here is that I believe exploring creative outlets is an important facet of sustainable spirituality, especially in a busy place like San Francisco. So as an exercise, I’ve been periodically bringing my camera with me and making images before work. Here’s one such image, waiting a the bus stop, of an everyday object – a chain link fence. I used a $69 manual focus lens – the Nikon 200mm f/4 AI, with my E-P1, a combo that’s actually small enough to fit in my jacket pocket. With the 2x multiplier, that means I’m able to carry a 400mm lens and camera in my pocket. Not bad. The extreme telephoto compresses the links, and I shot wide open at f/4 to isolate one link in the fence.  Chain Link Fence (San Francisco, 2010). Olympus E-P1, Nikkor 200mm f/4 AI, 1/250s, f/4, ISO 400.
It all started with the 1987 Topps Complete Set. I has just been introduced to baseball cards by my dad, and there were two cards I went hunting for – Mark McGwire and Giants number 22, playing first base – Will Clark. Far and away, my favorite player of all time. I collected every single card of his from 1987 till 1992. I won a random drawing to be the Milk Duds Celebrity Bat Boy for a day, which meant I got to sit in the dugout at Candlestick before the game, get autographs, a picture with then-hitting coach Dusty Baker, and the best part – I got to meet Will Clark. Giants fan for life cemented. 1989 came and went, swept away by the boys across the bay (my second favorite team). I wasn’t old enough to realize the history yet. Just saw that my favorite player didn’t win the World Series. In 1993 they went 103-59 and didn’t make the playoffs. When Will Clark left after the 1993 season, I was heartbroken. To the Texas Rangers? Texas? From that point forward, it was a three-year gargantuan struggle to fill first base. Todd Benzinger? J. R. Phillips? Mark Carreon? Ahh, but then J. T. Snow came along, and hope re-emerged. Once number 6 took over at first base, the Giants had a string of eight straight seasons contending all the way to the last week. There was 1997, when they lost to the Marlins in the first round. 2000, losing to the Mets. Then 2002. 2002. We watched the woe-inducing Game 6 on tape, already knowing the result. Crushed. 2003, Snow gets thrown out at the plate. The Bonds era on the decline. The first baseman parade continued – Hillenbrand, Klesko, Bowker, Ishikawa. Something happened though, something special in 2010. It all changed with first base, a guy named Aubrey Huff. The 2010 Giants leader in the metric Wins Above Replacement (WAR) at 5.9, a spot inhabited for 13 seasons by a man named Bonds, and by another guy named Lincecum from 2008-9. Note that their regular season record in 1989, their last World Series appearance was 92-70. 2010? 92-70. Most important player in 1989? Will Clark, 9.4 WAR. Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
The improbable 2010 run stretched through the season, including falling way down in the standings only to climb back, with the whole cast of characters contributing to a playoff berth clinched in Game 162. Ross. Burrell. Posey. Torres. Cain. Sanchez and Sanchez. Uribe. The list goes on. Come playoffs, there was nail-biting win after nail-biting win, and somehow it seemed like everything was coming together. Down go the venerable Braves. Down go the mighty Phillies. On came the Texas Rangers. 20 runs in two games. One blight, a Game 3 loss, followed up by Bumgarner’s brilliant 8 innings in Game 4. Then came Game 5, Giants up 3 games to 1, a masterful pitching duel between Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum, scoreless through 6. When Renteria hit the 3-run homer in the seventh, it seemed like the end was truly near. Full count, bottom of the ninth, Brian Wilson on the mound. Strike three. Pandemonium in the Kuo household. Joy in the city of San Francisco. The 2010 Giants had won the World Series. I got to go to the victory parade. Winning feels great. Especially after 23 years.  Buster Posey in the Victory Parade (San Francisco, 2010). Nikon D200, 80-200mm f/2.8D, 1/320s, f/4, ISO 400. Here’s a shot from the eleventh floor of a building downtown. I transferred it to black and white and punched up the contrast slightly and also deepened the blacks. The bottom of the image is an old parking lot that they dug up to prepare ground for the new Transbay Terminal. It was interesting seeing them dig it up, as they seemed to excavate some old brick building foundation. Even with the leaning buildings on the edges (due to tilting a relatively wide focal length slightly downward), I think the image has a certain character to it. To me, it conveys the constant state of flux cities are always in – the high rise on the right is quite new and modern, the venerable Bay Bridge peeks out from the back, the two buildings in the center/left third are new, and the transbay terminal is pretty run down. They all inhabit the same space, side by side.  Transbay Terminal Under Construction (San Francisco, 2010). E-P1, 14-42mm, 1/160s, f/5, ISO 400. One from the archives – back in 2004, in the film days, I was in Scandanavia, and probably my favorite town that we visited was Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. During that trip I managed to mess up my 35mm Nikon, to the point where I had to manually rewind the film (by standing in a dark bathroom at night and twisting the film back into the canister with my finger). That meant I realistically could only shoot one roll of 35mm film a day, because I couldn’t do any film changes during the day. Fortunately, I also brought my Mamiya 6, a beautiful, 6x6cm rangefinder camera with me. I had to buy some extra 120 film, but it was worth it. Shooting manual focus and with prime lenses (with only 12 frames per roll of film, mind you) led me to a much more deliberate, considered form of photography. This shot works for me because there’s a kind of moodiness to it – an overcast sky near dusk, relatively neutral colors in the background with a brightly colored hat in the foreground.  A Hat in Bergen (Norway, 2004). Mamiya 6, 75mm f/3.5, Fuji Velvia. |
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