Black and White and Read All Over

I've found out I can bleed all the color out of my photos and go monochromatic. It's not Tri-X, but it's fun, which is the stated purpose of this space.

We're going to get a new Bay Bridge someday, and I'll be able to say, I remember when they were building that thing, sonny.

The light dancing on the water here caught my eye. Not sure how well it translates into black and white--??

We had record amounts of rain this past winter. Even the crab grass under the BART tracks in Albany has gone jungle on us.



And finally, some cross-pollenation between this and my other blog: Here's what a hill looks like at 6 am just before I run (jog) up it. Steep.

How Much Fun Am I Having?

Lots!

Some images speak for themselves:

Random Enough for PII

I created a folder on my desktop where I can drop images I deem inappropriate for Running Commentary yet interesting enough (to me) for posting here, in Phoning It In.

Back in my aht-see (phonetical spelling) days, when I was working on an advanced degree in a small, rather claustrophobic program and had to write pretentious descriptions of my ahtistic proclivities, I was known to describe what I was drawn to with the phrase "urban landscape." Never mind that a lot of my subjects were photographed in parks and woods and even on studio tabletops--just never mind that. Today's point is that I'm struck by how the three images I casually tossed into my desktop folder all fit under the urban landscape rubrick.



This is a screenshot, a still from a webcam that I've loved for years. The scene: the train station in Chita, Siberia, at 3 am on a Tuesday morning. Chita, a city with 300-thousand-plus residents, has a long and politically eclectic history (it's quite close to China), but what interests me is the activity at the train station at various times of day. The webcam streams in real time, so check it out if you've ever thought at all about what contemporary life in Siberia might be like.



Here's the station at 9:16 in the morning the following day. Watching the webcam is like looking through a knothole into a hidden world.



The final urban landscape of the day is a scene much closer to home. I took this while on a lunchtime walk yesterday near where I work. I was struck by how the light turned the Transamerica Pyramid a stark white, setting it in contrast to the foreground buildings.

Cities for me embody both the best and the worst of what humans are capable of creating. I find them endlessly fascinating.

Oh Boy, Now What

I've decided to start a new blog. The intent is to create a space where I can post the many phone photos I take--and any other random images I run across that strike me--and talk about them, or not, as the spirit moves me.

I have had a running blog since 2005, where I post phone photos taken on the run and (more or less) write about running. I'm finding that often I want to post a lot of photos there--too many, really, if I'm to stay true to the implied purpose of a running blog. I also have a Flickr page, but it feels chaotic and unfocused to me. Although this is also a fairly unstructured space, I'm not confined to quirky formatting rules in order to live here. It's intended as place for me to see how photos look "in print" and to read the mental meanderings the photos provoke.

Just two today:


I love this. By the time you're looking at this bud here, it will have bloomed into a purple iris.

Taking the close-up above followed right on the heels of taking this one:


The idea of taking macro-photos with a phone camera makes me laugh. This critter was slightly more than one inch long when stretched out straight. Who says slugs are icky?