Fitting, I suppose given the weather that we’ve been having in the Bay Area this week.

2 years ago I left the apartment earlier than usual for work and spent an hour or so downtown tracking people during their commute, looking for photographic opportunities.  Despite getting a little wet, I had a great time and continued my adventure that evening after work.  I ended up with a few shots that I liked making this week’s selection a little difficult.  I opted for this black & white shot as I like the way the woman seems to be tracking the white line that crosses the frame.

I had set out to try to capture the mood of commuting in the city in the rain – I wanted lots of umbrellas, and blurred motion to signify the movement of the people looking to avoid getting wet.  I had planned on converting some of the images to black and white but I ended up with some great colors in some of the shots and left those as shot.  But shots like this I felt were indeed better when converted to black and white as I had originally intended.

To achieve this shot, I metered the scene and stopped down the aperture to f/22 in order to maximize the shutter speed.  In order to keep the shutter speed from being too slow and in order to introduce some grain to the image, I bumped up the ISO settings to 3200.  I had the camera set this way for several shots and would pick a target and start shooting.  In this case, I chose the woman with the plastic umbrella and I tracked her across the street as I shot – thus slightly blurring the rest of the scene.  In Lightroom I converted the image to black and white.  I altered a few settings to bump up the contrast and increase the graininess of the shot.

I have it on my list of projects to go out and shoot some more like this, but I find it hard to motivate to go out in the mornings in this rain if I’m not heading to work..  Ah well, there will be more rain storms.  That I know.

In 2004 a group of us went for a camping trip on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay.

For that trip I had along with me my point and shoot digital camera (at the time an Olympus D40) and my film camera (this pre-dated my digital SLR days).  Once I had a relatively reasonably reliable digital point and shoot it was pretty standard for me to shoot b&w film and use the point and shoot for color snapshots.

I later scanned this image in using my Nikon Coolpix film scanner.  And looking at this image, vs. digital images converted to black and white, there is definitely a difference.  I love the grain in the image.

After scanning the image in, I did some post-processing in Lightroom, including lightening up the faced of the girls a little and improving the contrast a little on this foggy day.  I like this picture as a simple portrait of my nieces.  They’re smiling and having a good time.

In 2003 I journeyed off to Thailand after taking a leave from work.

This was anonther in a series of departures for me – starting with leaving college, followed by moving to San Francisco, leaving my job at Intuit, and this time, leaving my job at Wells Fargo – each time without a job lined up.  And this would not be the last.

I really enjoy the freedom of having time off and being able to take stock of my life and see a little of the world.  Taking time between jobs (or when moving, leaving school,.) has been a great way to take that time and see things that have really changed my perspective on the world.

In Thailand I started in Bangkok, traveled North to the hills, and finally made my way South to the beaches.  I was taken with the country and the people (as I find most people are) and have recommeded Thailand as a destination to just about anyone who will listen.

This photo was taken in Chiang Mai, in the Northern hills of Thailand.  There are many temples in Chiang Mai, this image is from Wat Chedi Luang – known more for its elephant-adorned facade.  This statue was in a small building on the edge of the property.  There were several of these monk statues, each fitted out with gold leaf.  I loved the way the gold leaf flaked off of the statues and I loved the light coming in through the openings in the building – large windows and doors which allowed light and a good breeze to come in.

Being 2003, I was still shooting film at this point.  I had recently converted from my Contax system so this image was taken with my Nikon N80 camera and a standard zoom lens (24-85 AF-S ED G 3.5-4.5).  I still own this lens and while its small size and shooting range are convenient, the variable 3.5-4.5 minimum aperture is annoying.

I shot this using Kodak Tri-x black & white film, by far my favorite black & white film. It is a little on the slow side but I just love the quality of the images it produces.  Occasionally I would play around with other film, Fuji, other flavors of Kodak (tmax, which I’m not a fan of), but my usual go-to film was Kodak Tri-x or it’s higher-sensitivity cousin Plus-X.

On trips like these I would carry an average of at least 1 roll of film per day (so I had about 40 rolls for this trip) and on any day walking around I’d be carrying 4-6 rolls with me as well as a film-puller, which I could use to switch film before the roll was used up.  This was handy when moving from daylight to indoors or lower-light situations, but it was more critical for switching between black & white and color.  It’s amazing to think of where we’ve come with digital.

I really like the way this image came out – it was fairly dark in the room, though not as dark as this image would have you believe.  I shot the image a little dark, so as to keep details in the gold leaf (and to avoid a slow shutter speed and the accompanying camera shake).  After scanning in the image I darkened it a bit more to darken out the background but keeping in enough elements to keep the sense of place.

Later on this trip I ventured over to Japan, spending a few days around Kyoto.  There too I visited many temples, which were quite different from Chiang Mai but still maintained much of the same tranquility.

In 2007 I made it back to Thailand, and I look forward to my return.

While in Vietnam I rented a motorbike to take around for the afternoon.  This was right around the center of Vietnam – outside the towns of Da Nang and Hoi An.  There was lots of activity during the day, a lot of folks out in the fields working the rice paddies.

I saw this hand cart on the side of the road and stopped to take a few photos of it.  I was traveling on this trip with both my 35mm camera as well as my new Digital SLR (the Nikon D70) but for this motorbike ride I brought only with me my 35mm camera, with both black and white and color slide film.

There really is a simplicity to life out in the countryside of South East Asia, which is I know a viewpoint that is hardly original and over-glamorizes the peasant life but it’s hard to escape the feeling, running around in our over-connected lives when suddenly you’re face-to-face with a farmer tending to the fields with his ox-drawn cart.

This image can be seen along with many others from that Vietnam trip, 3 years ago this week.

This Photograph was taken in Paris, France back in 2001. I was there with Dan (as he was preparing to run the Paris marathon). This statue is somewhere along the Tuileries gardens – I really can’t remember exactly where anymore.

At the time of this trip both Dan and I were taking a small break from work and so we were able to enjoy a few weeks in Europe (I later want on to spend a week + with my Dad in Germany). This is becoming more relevant as I’m wrapping up my last weeks at StubHub and am staring down the barrel of another break from work – which I’m really looking forward to.

The exact date of the photo is unknown as this was the days before digital so there’s no accurate timestamp.. but looking back at my journals from then it was definitely taken somewhere between April 6th to 9th. I believe I shot this with my Contax Aria camera (which I really do miss..) and shot on Kodak Tri-X film. I do miss the days of black and white – and as much as I say I’m going to get back into a darkroom it just never happens and instead I find myself in front of Photoshop.

I wonder if the sculpter could have imagined these reminiscings as he sculpted these angels?

This and more photos can be seen here in PicsfromTrips