Oakland Reflections II, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Here’s another photo in my series of reflections from downtown Oakland.

Forgotten in the mythology of Oakland–the high violent crime rate, and the barrios that gave birth to the Black Panthers–is the fact that this is a thriving city. San Francisco, across the Bay, casts a long shadow. It’s hard to compete with a sibling so graceful and talented. It’s also hard to overcome Gertrude Stein’s pithy epigram about the lack of a there being there.

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Oakland is one of the largest West coast ports, engorged on the China trade. The hilltown suburbs of Piedmont and Montclair are among California’s wealthiest. Oakland’s Chinatown is extensive and authentic, without t-shirts for sale, tourists hardly in sight. And, as these photos show, downtown Oakland presents great architectural variety, with baroque 1920s skyscrapers reflected in the curved, mirrored glass of modern office towers.

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I had a great time photographing these reflections. The moral for me: don’t pass up photographic subjects just because they are local (this moral comes up often). Sometimes the supposedly less glamorous subject has more glamour than that which at first sight seems to dominate the glamour field.

Related Stories: Reflections, Downtown Oakland; Persistence of Reflections.

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Persistence of Reflections, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The reflections in downtown Oakland, as I’ve said, remind me of architecture by Gaudí. Close up, looking at the reflection of the clock, we move from Gaudí to Dali, particularly his famous painting with floppy time pieces, The Persistence of Memory.

[Nikon D300, 18-200 VR Zoom lens at 170mm (265mm in 35mm equivalent terms), circular polarizer, 1/250 of a second at f/7.1 and ISO 500, handheld.]

Reflections, Downtown Oakland, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Mark and I wandered downtown Oakland with our cameras, and we were struck by these reflections in the curved glass of an office building on Broadway. They looked to me like something constructed by Gaudí, or maybe Dr. Seuss. I used a polarizing filter to amplify the clarity of the reflections.

Normally, I’d use a tripod to get a shot like this with sufficient clarity. But I’ve found very little noise with my new D300. So instead of stabilizing with my tripod, I boosted the ISO to 500 to get a fast enough shutter speed so the resulting photo would be sharp handheld.

Don’t get me wrong: I advocate using a tripod, and use one a great deal of the time. Still, it was nice to be able to find the right angle without having to worry about positioning my three-legged friend. And I think you’ll agree that there’s basically no noise in the final image.

One purpose of the Oakland exploration yesterday was to test my FindMeSpot. This is a personal GPS device that connects to a low-orbit satellite, and can be used to pinpoint my location. The idea is that I can send out an email or text message to designated recipients saying I’m OK, or that I need help. The email message includes a link to my coordinates, placed on a Google map. This device can also be used to call 911 for search and rescue.

Theoretically, this GPS device could be a life saver, for example, if I get lost in the desert at night again.

The device does need to be able to see the open sky to work. In my tests, an “I’m OK” email works fine, and makes it to the designated recipients with my position. But in downtown Oakland, and by the harbor, we were testing a tracking mode that is supposed to continuously record one’s position (and note it once every ten minutes). This “spot casting” mode (which costs extra) doesn’t seem to work very well, alas.

[Nikon D300, 18-200 VR Zoom lens at 120mm (180mm in 35mm equivalent terms), circular polarizer, 1/250 of a second at f/7.1 and ISO 500, handheld.]