No this isn’t a jellyfish, sea anemone, or a moist spider (both of these have been suggested). It is a flower I photographed today at the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. Found in the Mesoamerican Cloud Forest area, it is of the proteaceae genus, protea neriifolia, commonly known as “Pink Mink.” (Good thing the garden is well labeled!)
Here’s a photo closer in:
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Here are some more of the primrose photos from my birthday shoot along with a conundrum:
Why is a primrose prim?
I phrase this as a question because I don’t have an answer. Primroses, or members of the primula genus, or primulaceae, grow all over the northern hemisphere from the arctic to the tropics and a few places in the southern hemisphere as well.
Primroses have been cultivated for at least 500 years. Florist Associations promote the flower as meaning “I can’t live without you” — particuarly in a woman. (As an aside, you have to wonder about a trade association that managed to promote a desert weed with the only virtue that it flowers at the end of December into the Christmas plant, the poinsettia.)
Anyhow, there’s nothing prim about this lush and gaudy primrose cultivars. I love them!
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Everyone in the house got up early, and I drove the kids to school this morning on the early side. Nicky was the first drop-off at Step One pre-school, with Julian, my second grader, and baby Mathew waiting on the car.
On the way across Grizzly, Mathew fell alseep. Which was good, because he was very cranky. We went up the switchbacks into the fog.
Julian and I had a great time talking. He looked out the window, and said, “Daddy, you should have brought your camera!”
“But I did.”
“Stop the car, Daddy, and take a photo.”
So I did, watching the fog steam over the hills on the Bay side over Oakland.
A little further down the road I caught this view east and inland, of Mount Diablo, with the fog half rolling in over the part-green (from all the recent rain) and part-brown hills. But there was no place to stop the car. I went a little further, turned the car around, found a safe pull-off, and snapped half a dozen images using my vibration reduction lens hand held.
Then I got back in the car. Julian was worried about how I would turn around again, and whether I would get him to school on time. We drove ahead, found a place to u-turn, and easily made it to Archway before the bell.
Julian’s very progressive school celebrates Martin Luther King Day with a four-day weekend. So I’m taking him tomorrow morning to photograph in San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum. Julian gets to photograph with the toy, and I have a permit allowing me to use a tripod and wander off the paths (provided I’m careful and respectful of the plantings, of course).
Check out this photo larger. It’s one of those images, I think, that really repays looking at a bit more closely.
It rained last night. Between dropping the kids off at school and getting ready to go across the Bay to MacWorld, I noticed these beautiful drops in the garden.
I was dressed in my presentation clothes–not that these are much, in this case a pair of clean pants and a Lens Baby T-shirt that I won as my honarable mention prize in the Lens Baby macro contest. Keeping reasonably presentable, a contradiction with down and dirty photography, was on my mind. (Here’s my honorable-mention winning photo.)
To start with, I took out my new water-proof toy, which can kind of be used casually (and of course all the wetness didn’t matter to it). But using it felt a bit removed from the water drops, and I couldn’t get in close enough with precision.
So I trotted out the classic macro technology, the D70 on a tripod stopped way down with long exposures and my 105mm macro lens with 68mm of stacked extension tubes. What fun!
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On my recent birthday (Hint: My number’s the same as Herbie’s) I went to Berkeley Hort to photograph flowers. I started with a spectacular bromeliad flower in the greenhouse, and then spent a great deal of time with the primroses. Here are the first couple of photos (more to come!).
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I’ve photographed this bromeliad flower (it is a Guzmania hybrid) over the last couple of days at Berkeley Hort. The people at Berkeley Hort are very nice to me when I am photographing: thanks, Berkeley Hort!
The pattern of the photo above reminds me of an abstract landscape like might be used to illustrate Big Rock Candy Mountains. (Click here for the words and lyrics.) The song was part of the soundtrack for the film O Brother Where Art Thou.
This photo, taken with my toy Pentax Option WPi, gives you a better idea of the context of this fantastic flower:
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Here’s another view somewhere between the extreme close-up of the first photo, but not as broad as the second:
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I photographed this monitor lizard at the Vivarium in Berkeley with my new toy. My new toy is a Pentax Optio WPi. It measures about 3½ X 1½ X 1 inches and weighes a couple of ounces. The thing is waterproof. It takes six megapixel Jpegs. The cost, with an appropriate SD memory card, is a little more than $300.00.
The waterproof feature is worth the price of admission, at least at dinner parties. (Watch me drop it in a glass of ice water, and then take pictures!) However, as you might expect, the camera is a little hard to use precisely, and it’s too bad it won’t do a RAW capture.
My thinking in buying this “toy” was born from frustration about not wanting to take my expensive equipment out in wet and dusty conditions. There’s no problem with dust or water with this “little guy”, you just wipe it off. Just slip it in a pocket, it’s a far cry from schlepping my usual thirty pounds of gear.
And it does pretty decent pictures once you figure out how to use the manual modes.
I also bear in mind something that photographer Ruth Orkin once explained: she could get in and take photos with a consumer point-and-shoot in places she never could use her professional gear. My little guy goes anywhere and does not shout “pro photographer.”
Oh yeah, he also is an alarm clock, a voice recorder, and (for your inner spy) has a document photography mode.
I’ll be posting more photos from my little guy in the fullness of time.
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MacWrld Remindr: I’ll be speaking about Thinking Digitally in the Field at MacWorld this coming week. Please visit me at the Wiley Publishing booth at 12:30 on Wednesday January 11 at MacWorld at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
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Recently I read with great interest a New York Times business section interview with Antonio M. Perez, Eastman Kodak’s chief executive. (The interview appeared in the January 7, 2006 paper; you have to have an online NY Times membership to read it.)
Mr. Perez is basically right that the camera industry hasn’t really delivered yet on the promise of digital. As he puts it:
This industry thinks of digital capture devices as ‘filmless cameras,’ in the same way that the auto industry thought of the first motor cars as ‘horseless carriages,’ ” he said. “So far, all we’ve done is replace silver with silicon.
Good analogy. I do think we’re at the “horseless carriage” stage of digital photography. My Nikon D70 dSLR for the most part looks like, and works like, its film SLR siblings.
But then Mr. Perez proposes some “gee whiz” features that propel digital photography all the way to the era of the Jetsons:
Why shouldn’t a camera “infer” that you want to send your mom and your sister the picture you just took of your baby - and do it for you? Why shouldn’t it automatically eliminate red eye, unflattering shadows, even reopen eyes that were photographed in mid-blink? Why shouldn’t electronic archives respond to a command to display all pictures of your daughter - or, of your daughter with her dog, or wearing a blue dress?
At best, this stuff is basically trivial (well, all except the better ways to search archives). At worst, Mr. Perez falls into the fallacy of thinking he–or his camera’s automatic features–know better than I do. This has always been an irritating problem with cameras that possess sophisticated electronics, and it’s going from bad to worse in the digital era. (It’s also an issue with certain smug operating systems and software, such as Microsoft Windows and Word, but that’s a story for another, well, story.)
I don’t want my camera to “infer” on its own that my mom and sister (if I had one) should get a copy of the photo I just took. I don’t want my camera correcting red eye–or other “flaws”–without my initiation of the correction process. And I certainly don’t want an annoying pop-up that I have to make go away asking me if I want to do one of these things while I’m concentrating on something else.
Getting it means understanding that digital photography is an entirely new medium: one that combines capture and computer. I want my cameras to make available the power of their electronic “brains” in the field and to help facilitate post-production when connected to the computer in the studio. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
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Here’s another exchange showing Mr. Perez not quite getting it:
Q: Kodak has always made its money from consumable goods - film to capture images in the old days, paper and inks to make snapshots today. Won’t the growing use of electronics wreak havoc on your bottom line?
A: Consumables won’t go away for a long, long time. People like to thumb through albums and display photos. Home printing has gotten easier. And what could be more convenient than making prints at a retail kiosk when you’re in the store for other reasons anyway? People envisioned a paperless office after computers were invented, and that certainly didn’t happen.
The problem here is probably wishful thinking: Kodak has always made its money from disposables. While there will always be some need and desire for prints to put on walls, the vast bulk of digital photographs will remain digital. These photos will be sent as email attachments, yes posted to photo blogs, and end up on Flickr. And by the way, Mr. Perez, when we wanted to produce an album of photos of the kids for their grandparents, we found producing one-off books out of Flickr a far cheaper and more elegant way to go. Eat your heart out, Kodak!
Part of the problem with the whole situation is a disconnect. There are many great technicians in the world of Photoshop and digital photography, but no clearly great image makers or images have emerged yet. Across the great divide, photographers cling to their dying craft but don’t have the computer skills to master digital. Camera and film manufacturers who pay patronizing lip service to digital, and bookstore shelving categories (there is one category for photography and another within computer books for digital photography) mirror this damaging schism.
Considering Kodak’s vague–and vaguely cartoonish–conception of the future of digital, it’s too bad the company has been so quick to drop its distinguished silver halide black and white printing business. (See photographer John Sexton’s newsletter article A Sad Day for Photography.)
No doubt Kodak would also like to drop color film, but can’t so long as it is a profitable annuity business.
Putting theoretical profits ahead of the needs of the craft of photography will ultimately do Kodak (and photographers of both film and digital persuasions) a disservice because it does nothing to heal the chasm between photography and digital technology.
Related Photoblog 2.0 posts:
Would Ansel Like Digital?
Alas for Analog
Going with the Grain
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A number of related blog stories tell how we bundled the three kids in the car and drove two days each way there-and-back again for a family celebration. Along the way, I stopped to take photos.
Here’s the story in order from beginning to end.
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Sunset near Bakersfield | The year turns, and the sun sets, as I photograph the furrows of Bakersfield. |
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Barstow Sunrise | Up before the kids to photograph the sunrise. |
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Winter Mojave Flower | How many times can you listen to “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel?” We go for the world record. |
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Kids! Kar! Krazy! | Be careful when playing on the Santa Fe tracks… |
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Birthday Boy | The reason for the Phoenix roundtrip. |
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Where Saguaros Grow to Heaven | Magnificent sentinels of the Southwest. |
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Saguaro Silhouette Sunset | Long lens on sunset and saguaros. |
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Farewell 2005! | A fiery sunset ends the year and greets our return to California. |
Leaving the family gathering near Phoenix, we drove home. We hoped to drive back a little more slowly than we had come.
We took a detour along old Route 66 in the Mojave Mountains over Sitgreaves Pass. Part of the point was to visit the ghost town of Oatman. For the record, this is more tourist attraction than ghost town like Bodie. Oatman was gearing up for a big New Year’s Eve party with fake gun battles and heavily made-up “Arizona cowgirls.” Nicky was scared of the (tame) burros wandering the street. We got out of Oatman fast.
Here’s a photo of the landscape along Route 66 (the first transcontinental road) near Sitgreaves Pass:
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Coming down from the Mojave Mountains on the Colorado River plateau between Golden Shores, Arizona (a rather large retirement and recreational vehicle community) and Needles, California (a dusty town beside the Interstate), I stopped to photograph sunset:
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The next day it was onward into the storm front blanketing California and a new year!
These two photos are from the other night when I hiked up to Wildcat Peak, froze (not literally) my various parts off, enjoyed a beautiful sunset, and hiked back to “civilization” in the dark. I think both images really benefit from being viewed in the larger size.
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Not a Trojan horse, this “sea horse” lives with his work horse buddies in the Port of Oakland.
Julian’s school finished today at noon, so I picked him up. First we had a good lunch, then we went photographing, he with one camera and me with another. What a great trip to be taking pictures with my son! We photographed pigeons in Jack London Square, and “sea horses” in the busy Oakland port.
The photograph of saguaro cacti silhouettes against the setting sun was taken from the roof of the Hopper house with a tripod-mounted camera at 400mm (600mm equivalent in 35mm terms). Tricky thing using a long lens with the setting sun, because you really don’t want to look through it when it is pointed right at the sun (it might damage your eyes).
Way out in the desert where saguaros reach to heaven
lived a mother jackrabbit and her little jacks seven.
“Snuggle!” said the mother. “We snuggle!” said the seven,
so they snuggled all night where saguaros reach to heaven.
–from Way Out in the Desert, a book my kids enjoy.
In Arizona there are plenty of saguaros rising to heaven, and not just in the desert. I find these cacti an irresistible subject!
These saguaros are home to birds and animals:
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Up close, they are really formidable (or else look like a map of a very foreign country):
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They bear witness as construction turns the desert into gated suburbs:
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Most of all, these saguaros do their job–reaching for heaven:
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