Category Archives: Uncategorized

Some pointers based on a stroll down Haight Street last Friday night…

Subtle use of a fog filter can provide a dreamy image that evokes romance or mystery.

 Complimentary eye and clothing color is a winner for high-key fashion portraits.

 Hats can make a classy gal even classier. A slightly exaggerated tilt will avoid facial shadows.

Shooting lingerie in black and white is a true sign of sophistication for any photographer.

Fashionable eyeglasses, if shot correctly, can draw attention to beautiful eyes.

Have your subject focus his attention on something outside the field of view to create a feeling of candidness and intrigue.

 And lastly, tasteful post-processing using a bit of tone mapping and HDR can bring out shadow details without losing a sense of realism.

It is noon on Mother’s Day. Geico’s advertising airplane has been circling my house for the last hour. It ‘s pulling a giant advertising banner against the relentless San Francisco wind. I can’t hear myself think.

This is the un-cropped frame from a Canon 400 mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter, yielding an effective lens length of 560 mm (or 576 mm if the 1.4x converter is actually a 1.44x converter as I suspect). At 1.4x, the effective angular width across the diagonal of a frame (35 mm full frame body) is 4.4 degrees.

This aircraft looks to me to be a late 1950s Piper PA-18-150 Super Cub, having a wingspan of 35 feet. With some arithmetic, I can calculate how far away this aircraft is. The plane isn’t directly above me. The shot’s about 15 degrees off vertical (perhaps more, but I’ll be conservative for calculations, erring in Geico’s favor). It’s  wingspan occupies 0.39 of the diagonal image, meaning the full diagonal span of this photo is 90 feet. If I’m right about the aircraft model, that means this airplane is 1170 feet away from me. I shot the picture from the 9th floor of a building, 90 feet above ground. Ground elevation is 10 feet.

So the maximum altitude for this aircraft - assuming 35 foot wingspan -  is 1270 feet. Given that the photo angle is about 15 degrees from vertical, it’s altitude is more likely about 100 feet lower. Trigonometry-aware readers will note that you can adjust for both the departure from vertical and the departure from perpendicularity of the wingspan by about sin(15) squared = .93, yielding a likely elevation of 1180 feet above sea level.

My reading of Federal Aviation Regulations, title 14, Part 91.119 (Minimum Safe Altitudes)  specifies a minimum distance over congested areas of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft. The residential building at One Rincon Hill is over 600 feet high, above a base at elevation around 100 feet, so it tops out at over 700 feet above sea level. One Rincon is about 800 feet north from where I shot this picture.

Based on my math above and my reading of FAR 91.119, Geico’s airplane should be flying at an altitude of at least 1700 feet. It’s clearly well below that – my math can’t be that far off. And if I’m missing some exemption to the FAR that allows Geico to buzz my patio on Mother’s Day for more that an hour straight, Geico is still bunch of bastards with very bad manners.

Solar deities are a dime a dozen in the ancient world. Ra, Surya, Tonatiuh, Malakbel, Amun/Aten, Albina, Helios, Arinna, Ah Kin, Koyash, Nahundi and dozens of other have all had their day in the sun. All of them basically boiled down to the same sun. I’m partial to the late sun gods and their imagery.

Helios was the main solar deity for the Greeks. He drove a chariot pulled by solar steeds across the sky. Apollo was also closely related to the sun. Apollo was an Olympian and Helios a Titan. Homer considered them to be independent, but Pseudo-Eratosthenes clearly equated them.

The Romans called Helios Sol Invictus, a popular figure on sarcophagi (above right) and the walls of Pompeii (left). They saw Apollo as a separate deity, but, confusingly, their Apollo often appears in the guise of Sol. They also managed to weave Mithras, who was very popular in Rome around the third century, into the sun picture as well. Unlike the static depictions of gods by the Greeks, Roman religious imagery, including that of the early Christians, was full of action and expression.

Sol appears occasionally on 1st and 2nd century coinage, and very often through the 3rd and 4th centuries. Although Sol worship was sufficiently popular in the 5th century for Augustine to rail about it, the last known appearance of a Roman Sol inscription is from around 390 AD. Romans then started preferring Jesus to Sol Invictus and lively Christian imagery replaced good ol’ Sol. More on that to follow.

Mithras slaying the bull. Sol Invictus watches in his quadriga at top left

Sol with quadriga roundel from the Arch of Constantine

1st centruy altar with dedication to the most holy Sun

Follis of Constantine with Sol Invictus

Sol or Apollo as Sol from Pompeii

Dedication for the emperor’s health from a priest of the cult, Rome.

The Aztecs are reported to have cultivated dahlias for food, ceremonies and as decorations. Early European visitors to Mexico described their brilliant colors and brought them home for breeding; now they’re grown just about everywhere.

Golden Gate Park is home to the work of some award-winning dahlia hybridizers, including Erik & Gerda Juul and Lou Paradise. Dahlia varieties seem to drift rather rapidly, so they warrant documentation. In honor of the start of Spring, I’ve posted a collection of photos of the various dahlias grown in Golden Gate Park with a variety name for each. These are intended more as documentation than art. The sort of abstraction of these flowers that I prefer merely irritates their breeders. I like to shoot them after their prime and blur out the details, but I’ve tried to avoid that for this group.

Click here for the full collection.

Skipley Spot of Gold

Sellwood Glory

Kenora Fireball

Helene Juul

Mother hummingbirds bring their chicks up to our patio soon after the chicks are able to leave the nest. The chicks hang around, observing but not participating in the normal hummingbird feuds on the patio (Anna’s Hummingbirds are fiercely territorial). For some reason the young birds often sit on flat surfaces, something the adults almost never do. The young also spend much of the day napping, like this guy, about three days out of the nest.