298. Greening plus Digital photography.

I've been distracted of late and these notes have been sitting on my computer waiting for me to move them here. Now is that time.

Greening Moto Bay

It occurred to me last night, as I pulled load after load of heavy trash bags and our eco-stations’s wood stakes and collapsed boxes from the bay end of the huge pier 30,32 complex to our trucks near the Embarcadero, that I have been failing spectacularly this year in my scheme to work the middle of events, and not the start or end.

The good reasons for this scheme is that it would make best use of my roving-sorting-and-pulling skills. The real reason is that the starts are boring and annoying, and the ends are such hard work. Some events are too short to have a separate “middle” shift. Sometimes there are middle shifts, but not for my pay grade. And I’m in a bind here in that I do want to be around for the final station sort, especially when there’s a major food vendor component. That’s where my roving sorting skills really do pay off, as they prevent unsorted vendor bags from being hauled back to our dumpsters or trucks. 

But yesterday’s event, Moto Bay, had very little food so my skills were largely wasted. This was our first time with this event, so we didn’t know exactly what to expect. This, I suspect, was also why our "A" crew was working it. And the setting was lovely. These piers are just south of the Bay Bridge with a great view of the new SOMA downtown, the Giant’s stadium, and what there is to see of the developing Mission Bay neighborhood modestly rising to the south. And as we were closing down around 10pm, the fog was rolling in dramatically.

Still, after the third heavy toter load from the far end of the pier, I was ready to hand this job over to our younger workers. I did manage to get away before 11pm, fifteen minutes early. 

In praise of Today

And by “Today” I mean all the newfangled things that people so often like to nit pick, and in particular my little Samsung digital camera. I tend to buy the low-end of high-tech gadgets, since I tend to not really use them that much. This camera is a perfect example of this tendency. It was the cheapest option that seemed to do the things I needed for a particular project (no idea what it was, as this was years ago). And then it mostly set in a drawer for years as I’d gotten out of the habit of photography. 

But photographs turn out to be a wonderful way of documenting things around my building, so I started taking pictures again for HOA purposes. And then for myself. I never bothered to really learn the ins and outs of this camera -- and Samsung doesn’t exactly make it easy to figure out. I only recently turned my flash back on and was shocked by how much improved the indoor photos were. I only shoot in low resolution mode since I only display my photos on the computer, and am more interested in simple documentation than in resolution -- but I can shoot fairly high res if I wanted to.

So, while taking some vastly improved flash shots of our laundry room today -- people (not including myself) are keen on having it painted -- it occurred to me that this is, almost beyond doubt, the best camera I’ve ever owned. The 10x optical zoom is better than anything I ever had for my 35mm cameras. I can do macro photography much easier than with my 35mm cameras. This camera only has a display screen on the back so framing a shot is similar to a view camera -- which I’ve always preferred. And it goes without saying that the ability to view and delete shots you’ve just taken makes life so much easier than with a film camera. Likewise, the free editing options of Google Photo are superior to anything I could have done in the darkroom in the past. It’s possible I can’t play some of the depth-of-field games I used to play with my film cameras, but I don’t actually know that for a fact -- since I’ve never tried/studied the documentation that carefully. 

All I have to do to seal this matter, is think how much easier it would have been to photograph weddings with cameras like this. And beyond “easier” it would have been low stress as the nightmare all wedding photographers of the past lived with was the possibility of failing to properly load the film so that the film wasn’t actually advancing in the camera as you worked -- so that at the end of the day you had nothing on film. And yes, this happens. Not to me for a wedding, but it did happen to me at least twice on other “once in a lifetime” photo opportunities. 

And I haven’t even mentioned that this camera is small enough to carry in my pants pocket, and I now usually carry a little USB cord with it in my backpack to I can upload to my computer, edit, and send out links from anywhere. (Sending out the links does require WiFi access.)

Tea and fitness

This morning I had a terrible time getting out of bed and off to the gym. It was a cold Sunday morning and my bed had never felt so warm and comfortable. When I finally arrived at the gym I noticed that it was exactly 10am and the outside temp was 56F. Old people seem to be always cold, something I’m rather looking forward to, as I tend to get overheated, but I have yet to detect any indication that this is happening to me. My threshold for feeling cold remains 60F. How much is this tendency to feel cold simply the consequence of taking blood thinning medications, I wonder.

I’m at my new favorite Peet’s -- deep in SOMA -- but I think this may be the last time. My bus luck getting here couldn’t have been worse, and then I arrived to find it packed. I’m sitting on a stool again.