This is another in a series of walking around shots, this time, taken in San Francisco.

Back in 2007 I was walking to work quite a bit and I’d usually follow a pretty similar path.  This was also in the heyday of sidewalk stenciling, where people were taking their message to the streets quite literally, spray painting stenciled illustrations and sayings on the sidewalks and crosswalks around town.

Along this one section of my walk was stenciled this message:

We are not awake to the changes happening within.

I quite liked the message, it was something to ponder while on my walk.  But what struck me was the way in which it was delivered..  The stenciler broke up the message across a long stretch of the block into ever-increasing length, starting with a simple

We

We are

We are not

We are not awake

etc., etc., until the full message was displayed.  It was a great way to get ones attention.

This image isn’t spectacular in itself, more a documentation of the message and the medium.  To that end, I wanted a close cropping on the words but I wanted to provide some contextual visuals as well so I left in a few of the sidewalk cracks.  I decided to offset the positioning just a little and only provide some of the sidewalk cracks, so that I didn’t end up with a completely balanced composition – I like the slight uneasiness of the framing.  Other than that I just set the camera and shot.  I used my older Canon SD point and shoot camera for this shot as it was the camera I had with me.  As I’ve indicated before, I’ll always carry a camera of some sort with me – these days at the very least a cell phone camera but usually a full camera (if only a point and shoot) for better control over the images.

Last year while on another of those great January hikes, Meghan and I came upon this set of boots strung up in a tree.  It was a bit of an odd scene – we were in a park not far away from the suburban houses of a Sacramento neighborhood.  The boots themselves had an older styling/appearance that added to the oddness of the sight.

There’s nothing particularly fascinating about the photo itself, this was more of a documentation of the scene.  I took this with my Canon G10 and did a little post-processing in Lightroom, adding a little vignetting to help focus the attention on the bulls-eyed boots.

While the photo itself may not be great, I do like the scene.  It can lead one to wonder, just how these boots ended up here..  Was it related to some New Year’s festivities?  Did the owner have another set of shoes with him or did he hike out barefoot from here?

Living in the Bay area, we are often fortunate enough to have pretty incredible weather in the winter time.  As the rest of the country digs itself out of snow and ice, we get the chance to hike through hills lush green from the winter rains.

It was two years ago this week when Meghan and I went for a New Years hike through the Marin headlands and came upon this scene.  We first saw feathers from a distance and upon closer inspection, saw the remains of an owl.  There was no way to determine what brought the owl its demise.  What made the scene particularly odd was the way that several parts of the owl, scattered around the ground, were relatively intact.  Take for example this wing, which aside from the fact that it is no longer connected to anything, looks to be in good shape.

These disembodied but otherwise fine looking owl parts set a bit of a surreal scene.

For this photo, I wanted to capture the wing and how it was just laying in the grass, but I also wanted to include just a hint of the feathers in the corner, indicating more, just out of frame.

I had my Nikon camera outfitted with the 80-200mm f/2.8 lens hoping to capture some not-too distant wildlife while on this hike but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.  I would have preferred the 105mm macro for this shot, but wasn’t carrying it with me.

This year the weather wasn’t quite as cooperative though we did manage to take a misty walk with the dog.

In 2006 Meghan and I made a long weekend trip to Colorado to see the fall.  As I’ve said before, here in San Francisco we don’t get great fall foliage so October trips can be a good way to experience fall for a quick weekend.

This year though we were a little late.  The colors were mostly gone from the hillsides and during our trip we were treated to a pretty big snow storm.

I took this photo along the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs – one of the towns where we hung out this trip.  I like the rather stark feeling of this shot – which is pretty colorless except for the band of shrubs cutting across the frame.  This was a pretty typical sight for us, as the skies were grey with clouds and weather and the ground was dusted with snow – obliterating most of the colors from the scenes.

For this shot, I left it pretty much as I shot it, though I cropped the bottom just a tad to square up the image just slightly.

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 October 2007, Meghan and I went to Michigan for a long weekend.  After cruising around Ann Arbor for a day or two we traveled North around the “mitten” of Michigan.

One of the things I miss most here in San Francisco is the Fall scenery from back East (a common complaint among transplants to California).  While I’ve come to appreciate the California fall, it can’t compare with a proper colorful fall from the East.

As we traveled North we moved against the coming foliage change – by the time we got to where this photo was taken most of the color was already gone from the leaves.

For this trip I brought along only my Canon G7 camera, choosing to travel light.  This is always a tough choice – whether to bring the SLR or not.  There were many opportunities on this trip for the SLR, and the G7 wasn’t fully up to the task all of the time but it held its own relatively well.

To capture this shot, I pulled over to the side of the road and walked a little into the field.  I wanted to get right up to the row of corn stalks and cut out all of the ground beneath – but still leave in a little sky (since it was such a gorgeous day).  This shot was taken just before noon – and while the light is definitely a little flat as a result, I waited for a cloud covering to prevent the light from being too harsh.

I framed up with the top of the corn stalks – so that we’re just peering over the tops and aligned with the trees in the background, looking for a good assortment of shapes, sizes and colors.

I’ll be heading back to the East coast in a couple of weeks – and while I suspect a better part of the foliage will have turned, I may be in luck given the wet summer they had this year to still experience some of the scenery.