For this blog entry, I offer you a sampling from my photography tool kit. I’ve been practicing these photography themes for years. Some of my favorite subjects are window reflections, advertisements, architecture, shadows, street art, looking up, looking down, signs, patterns and textures. I also like to document the little unusual details that make San Francisco unique, and the occasional abandoned chair. These themes are like familiar friends that I keep coming back to, and for some reason I’m compelled to keep capturing them with my cameras. It’s fun and keeps me motivated to get out of the house and walk around. I hope you enjoy this sampling photographs taken in San Francisco in March of 2021.
I started off in March where I had left in February; photographing laundromats. These washers and dryers stand at the ready at Nob Hill Coin-op Laundry.
I like photographing adds and billboards around the city. I find a way to crop them in the frame or play off the reflections to make them more interesting and make them my own. This is an ad on a bus shelter for Optimism by passiton.com
I love photographing architecture and San Francisco has no shortage of incredible buildings to help fuel my passion. Often buildings will have lines leading up to them that not only add to their appearance, but are handy tools to help line up my shot. This is the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill.
This cable box is on an unnamed walkway between Clay and Sacramento Streets on Nob Hill. What would inspire Zamar and Walo to tag it up I can’t imagine. It does add a funkier look to this already funky scene.
This is the Union Bank lobby at 350 California Street. I liked the way the support beams reflected in the windows.
This artwork by Mariana Prutton is posted outside a boarded up store on Sutter Street. I wonder how this would have been received in 1918.
Looking down Sacramento Street on Nob Hill highlights how crappy our streets are nowadays.
A street sign shadow on a steep street on Russian Hill.
More window reflections. This is an empty corner store on Nob Hill.
Formally Park Hyatt San Francisco, Le Méridien San Francisco is a luxury hotel in the Financial District. It has some very unusual architecture.
This beautiful street art at 1027 Grant Avenue is by Vida Kuang.
Victor’s Pizza on Polk Street has long been one of favorite spots. Their sign has been around for a while.
I took this on Jackson Street while walking back from the store on Friday afternoon. This is an in-camera original shot in color with no filter.
A half moon looms over the Crown Zellerbach Building.
The Mechanics Monument was sculpted by Douglas Tilden and dedicated in 1901 at the base of Bush Street.
Tilden was born in Chico, California, in 1860. At age four, he contracted scarlet fever which left him deaf and mute for life. Tilden attended the California School for the Deaf and UC Berkeley, then he studied art in Paris.
The Mechanics Monument was commissioned to honor industrialist Peter Donahue, founder of the San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad.
The bronze sculpture depicts five men struggling to punch a hole through a metal plate with a punch press. At the base are symbols of Donahue's professions: an anvil represents foundries, a propeller represents shipping, and the driving wheel and connecting rod represent railroads.
When the monument was dedicated, many citizens were shocked by the sight of rude mechanicals cavorting in the street without their knickers. Editorials demanded that Tilden put trousers on the men. Tilden ignored the controversy and it faded away.
Nigella SF is a botanical boutique at One Front Street. The rounded windows create fun reflections.
The Nigella flower is also know as the “Love-in-a-Mist”, “Ragged Lady” and “Devil in the Bush”.
Lucky Cable Car 13 was all dressed up for Saint Patrick's Day.
Abstract love monster art on a boarded up store windows.
Located at Fairmont San Francisco, the Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar has delighted guests with its tropical décor, decadent libations and Asian cuisine since 1945.
In 1929, The Fairmont added a 75-foot indoor swimming pool on its Terrace Level. Known as the "Fairmont Plunge," the elaborate tile pool attracted local crowds and celebrities such as actress Helen Hayes, actor Ronald Reagan and members of the Water Follies.
In 1945, Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s leading set director, Mel Melvin, was hired to transform the Fairmont Plunge into Tonga Room. The pool became a “lagoon” and a floating stage for the orchestra was added to entertain guests each evening. Not surprisingly, Tonga Room was an instant success.
The Tonga Room has dance floor built from the remains of the S.S. Forester, a schooner that once traveled between San Francisco and the South Sea Islands. The Tonga Room also features periodic tropical rainstorms, complete with thunder and lightning.
This photograph incorporates two themes I like in photography, signs and looking up.
One of my mom’s comments about my blog from February was how clean the streets of San Francisco seemed. And generally, the streets are cleaner than last year during the middle of the pandemic. People still dump garbage and debris around town, but city crews are pretty good about picking it up. I like to document scenes like this, especially when they include abandoned chairs.
Sunrise through the top of Salesforce Tower.
The center median on California Street leads the eye straight to the Bay Bridge.
A local going for a morning walk.
In my February blog I highlighted the Year of the Ox sculptures around town. On a Sunday afternoon I found them all along Grant Avenue in Chinatown.
A long telephoto lens looking down California Street has the visual effect of flattening the steep hill.
A Lounge Chair sat at the bottom of Broadway street waiting for someone to sit in it again.
California Street bay windows reflecting evening light. I love San Francisco’s many bay windows and I love the way the evening light reflects off them.
This abandoned chair being illuminated by light reflecting off nearby buildings simply had to be photographed.
Profound and prophetic, yes, but I still don’t understand what inspired someone to post this sticker on a telephone pole.