A day in the Blue

My friend Frederick Johnson (frederickvan.com, @frederickvan on Twitter, and regular on the This Week in Photography podcast; aka TWiP), arranges local photowalks regularly, and Sunday I went along for the photowalk on Treasure Island. I’m not one for wandering around snapping random photos, so I proposed the idea of an “assignment” that we could each follow, to give us some kind of goal. And it’s always clever to force yourself out of your regular comfort zone of photography anyway. We decided the theme would be color, scratched down a series of hues on little scraps paper and drew them out of my knit hat. We chose Red, Yellow, Brown, Blue (but no sky or water allowed), and Black and White (both on the same ticket). We chose to leave out Green, as it would be entirely too obvious. I drew last and got Blue, which turned out to be surprisingly plentiful on the island. Although I think I’ve fulfilled my pain-chip-photo quota for the year!

Rusty Nuts

Having an objective really made it more interesting for me, and I think the rest of the guys agreed. And again it’s always fun to step out of your “normal” area of practice, to see what you can come up with. Here are the respective galleries:

• Blue (mine)


• Yellow (Egan Schulz)


• Red (Mike Greenberg)


• Brown (Frederick Johnson)


• Black & White (Ralf Weber)

I’m sure I’ll be on another one soon. Being the competitive types, I think next time we’ll put money on it and open it up to blind criticism. Fun! ;-)

San Francisco Twilight Criterium

Saturday night I shot the San Francisco Twilight Criterium, a bike race in the city that went from 5pm to after 9pm. The first run was Men’s Amateurs, followed by a Children’s “race”, then the Women’s Pro and finally Men’s Pro. Shooting a bike race at night certainly has its challenges, beyond the obvious “it’s dark out there!”. There were flood lights around the course, providing hot-spots of light at each turn and about mid-way down each straight. However the lights were pointed at the riders’ backs, so as not to blind them of course—but which happens to be very inconvenient for photography!

The gallery has a TON of photos posted; these are all available for the riders so basically anything that’s in focus went online. I like the idea that in some photos, the only face in focus in the middle of a big pack is “Bob”, and when “Bob” finds that photo, he’ll be able to show it off as if the image is all about him. Which of course, it is ;-)

Just one of my favorites from each segment here (I’m obviously keen on the dynamic blurred action shots), and the full 820 (out of 2687 shot—yeah, there’s a lot of throw-away in a shoot like this!) are all on the gallery.

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Shooting San Francisco Twilight Criterium in September

I've just been invited to shoot the San Francisco Twilight Criterium on September 13th. It should be an interesting challenge shooting racing at night!

Check out the site (designed by my friends at Energi Design) and come on out to support the riders! It sounds like a very exciting race.

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MacWorld San Francisco

It's San Francisco and it's January… it must be MacWorld.

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A nice surprise at SFO; Yankee Pier, T3

Due to a changed flight I had a long wait at SFO last night, and so ventured out for a proper sit-down meal. The receptionist at the Admirals Club advised either a sushi place that was "excellent", or just past that a place that did fresh fish that was also "very, very good". Since I knew I'd be dining at Le Bernardin the next night, reputed to have some of the best fish in the world (and certainly in NYC), I figured I'd skip the cooked fish and have it raw instead.

The sushi restaurant was unfortunately just a counter, with only pre-packaged arrangements and not a-la-carte. Not looking appealing, I moved on towards Yankee Pier to see what the fresh fish looked like.

What a brilliant plan that was. Yankee Pier is very, very good – being in an airport not withstanding. The waiter informed me of what was fresh that night, including one not on the menu – rainbow trout. I opted for that and a glass of wine (no half-bottles), and a small green salad.

Unfortunately, and this is the only area where the restaurant fell down, after probably at least 10 minutes and my first glass of wine, the salad still hadn't arrived, so I flagged the waiter to ensure they arrived separately (I really find it irritating when a restaurant delivers the starter and the main together). He ran off to check it and came back apologizing that my order had fallen off the board. Oops. Had I been rushing to a flight, this would have been the end of diner, but fortunately I had time to spare.

The salad came quickly after, a simple green salad with oil and vinegar. No dressing options, which I can appreciate as I wouldn't want my dinner guests palettes tainted by an erroneous choice of Blue Cheese or 1,000 Island dressing before presenting a perfectly cooked and delicate fish.

Shortly after (but not too quick; the timing was good) the fish came. And I have to say, it was superb. Not just airport-food superb, but truly superb. The trout was butterflied and grilled, simple and pure. Served over a bed of sautéd squash and red potatoes, with a wedge of lemon, and a dish of tartar sauce (which I ignored). It was cooked perfectly. I relish in the slightly tougher 'jerky' edges you get when you grill a fat fish and the edges are inevitably overdone; to me these are almost a delicacy in themselves.

Yankee Pier
San Francisco International Airport (SFO), Terminal 3
+1 650-821-8938
http://www.yankeepier.com/

rating: 4 feet

verdict: If you have time to kill in SFO, I can't think of a better place to do it.

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