Thursday, December 06, 2012

Early San Francisco Bay Aerial Footage



San Francisco Bay area aerial footage before the invention of stabilization. 
San Francisco Bay Digital Images Aerial Photography and FIlm Services
www.filmaerial.com


Uploaded on Jun 11, 2010 on youtube by "airboyd"

"This silent footage was out of sequence with the rest of the films and on a different reel. It appears to be a United Air Lines DC-3 flying over San Francisco and then landing and was taken from home movies in the Prelinger Archives. I'm not sure if this was a normal flight or if it was some kind of orientation ride as the flight path over the city seems a little more like a site seeing flight. I suspect it was taken before the other video of the terminal that I just posted but have no way of knowing."

National Geographic "Cameras Now and Then" - Pinhole Cameras





"I Didn't Know That Cameras Then and Now"


Published on Dec 4, 2012 on youtube.com by National Geographic
"Richard Ambrose and Jonny Phillips go back to basics to show how old-school photography is just as useful as the everyday digital camera."

Interesting video on the history of the camera and the pinhole camera.

Cool Aerial Views of the San Francisco Bay Area - Photography Video

Cool Aerial Views of the San Francisco Bay Area - Photography Video

Over 130 images from high over San Francisco in a helicopter.  This collection
spans from 2005 to present.  The focus is the San Francisco Bay, maritime communities and the local waterfronts.

Enjoy a tour over America's Favorite city with views of iconic landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, SF City Waterfront and San Francisco Bay area landscapes. 

No soundtrack, but it is high quality HD if you wish to play it full screen.
This is fast cut, 1 frame per second.
SF Bay Images sells photography slide shows for atmospheric art as digital downloads.


Aerial Film and Photography Services

www.sfbayphotography.com


Sandra Cannon, SF Bay Images


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO DERIVATIVES. NO RE-USE. 
NO RE-PURPOSING OR ADDING TO OTHER COMPOSITIONS.
PLEASE CONTACT US FOR LICENSING IMAGES.

San Francisco Bay Images Provides Corporate Installations

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Point Bonita Lighthouse In Blue


Point Bonita Lighthouse on the Mouth of the San Francisco Bay at Dawn.

Angelic Angel Island

Angel Island shrouded with fog.
Silhouettes of a pine tree on the Marin Headlands.


Cool Views From Downtown SF to the Pacific Ocean

Aerial photograph taken from downtown just before the Transamerica Tower looking west down the parallel streets to the Pacific Ocean. An unusually clear day. The streets line up just perfectly. Golden Gate Park is the swath of green on the left, the Presidio the mound of green on the right.


Cool Views - Aerial Photography of San Francisco - Downtown to the Pacific Ocean

Bill Dan Rocks


Artist Bill Dan continues to Rock the Sausalito Shoreline with his zen rock sculptures. You too can be amazed by his works on Bridgeway near Princess Street in Sausalito. He is there creating most  weekends. His usual spot is just east of the guy with the bird.


Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Fort Point - No Surf

Fort Point - No Surf



Standing Still


America Cup Class 2012, Pre-Trials
Standing Still
Before the Gate

San Francisco Bay Digital Images

Monday, December 03, 2012

Cool San Francisco Views, Just for Fun - Coit Tower


The only way to line up Coit Tower and the Transamerica Building nicely is from a helicopter.
One Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, California
Did you know there was a statue of Christopher Columbus in the Parking Lot?

COORDINATES: 
37° 48′ 9″ N122° 24′ 21″ W
37.8025-122.405833

Coit Tower

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia;
Coit Tower, also known as the Lillian Coit Memorial Tower, is a 210-foot (64 m) tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San FranciscoCalifornia. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco; at her death in 1929 Coit left one-third of her estate to the city for civic beautification. The tower was proposed in 1931 as an appropriate use of Coit's gift. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 29, 2008.[1]
The art deco tower, built of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard, with frescomurals by 27 different on-site artists and their numerous assistants, plus two additional paintings installed after creation off-site. Although an apocryphal story claims that the tower was designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle[3] due to Coit's affinity with the San Francisco firefighters of the day, the resemblance is coincidental.

Design

Brown's competition design envisioned a restaurant in the tower, which was changed to an exhibition area in the final version. The design uses three nesting concrete cylinders, the outermost a tapering fluted 180-foot (55 m) shaft that supports the viewing platform. An intermediate shaft contains a stairway, and an inner shaft houses the elevator. The observation deck is 32 feet (9.8 m) below the top, with an arcade and sylights above it. A rotunda at the base houses display space and a gift shop.[4]

Murals

The Coit Tower murals were done under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal federal employment programs for artists. Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission in 1933, and supervised the muralists, who were mainly faculty and students of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), including Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Ray Bertrand, Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Clifford Wight, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum and Frede Vidar.[8]
After Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural was destroyed by its Rockefeller Center patrons for the inclusion of an image of Lenin, the Coit Tower muralists protested, picketing the tower. Sympathy for Rivera led some artists to incorporate leftist ideas and composition elements in their works. Bernard Zakheim's "Library" depicts fellow artist John Langley Howard crumpling a newspaper in his left hand as he reaches for a shelved copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital with his right, and Stackpole is painted reading a newspaper headline announcing the destruction of Rivera's mural; Victor Arnautoff's "City Life" includes The New Masses and The Daily Worker periodicals in the scene's news stand rack; John Langley Howard's mural depicts an ethnically diverse Labor March as well as showing a destitute family panning for gold while a rich family observes; and Stackpole's Industries of California was composed along the same lines as an early study of the destroyed Man at the Crossroads.[9]
Two of the murals are of San Francisco Bay scenes. Most murals are done in fresco; the exceptions are one mural done in egg tempera (upstairs, in the last decorated room) and the works done in the elevator foyer, which are oil on canvas. While most of the murals have been restored, a small segment (the spiral stairway exit to the observation platform) was not restored but durably painted over with epoxy surfacing.
Most of the murals are open for public viewing without charge during open hours, although there are ongoing negotiations by the Recreation and Parks Department of San Francisco to begin charging visitors a fee to enter the mural rotunda. The murals in the spiral stairway, normally closed to the public, are open for viewing on Saturday mornings at 11:00 am with a free San Francisco City Guides tour.[10]
Since 2004 artist Ben Wood has collaborated with other artists on large scale video projections onto the exterior of Coit Tower, in 2004, 2006, 2008 & 2009.[11]


Cool Tints in Red - Golden Gate Bridge

Cool Tints in Red - Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge
Black and White Photograph Tinted in Red.
San Francisco Bay Digital Images

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

I Didn't Know That : Camera Special Effects



I Didn't Know That : Camera Special Effects
A National Geographic Video On Youtube describing the use of 13 cameras to capture an actor in mid air in 3D.
"The "time slice" effect is often used in action movies when actors appear frozen in time as a camera spins around them. Find out how ordinary digital still cameras are used to create this extraordinary special effect."

Cool Views - Aerial San Francisco Waterfront

Cool Views - Aerial San Francisco Waterfront
Embarcadeo
Helicopter over San Francisco Bay, January 2007


Cool Aerial Views - Hawk Over Treasure Island

Cool Aerial Views - Hawk Over 
San Francisco Bay 

Helicopter Shot. Actually, close flying birds
are not your friends when in a helicopter.
This Hawk ventured awfully close.
Close enough for a beauty shot.
Temporary Merry-go-around on the 
pier of treasure island.


San Francisco Bay Images Aerial Film Services: www.filmaerial.com

The Blues



Personally, I am not into photoshop tricks and like native images. This over-exposed mishap of the Blue Angels this past San Francisco Bay Fleet week, 2012, is definitely blog post worthy.

Buy San Francisco Bay Area Photography Online

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Ladies of the Palace in Black and White - 37.801728, -122.447682


Ladies of the Palace in Black and White
Palace of Fine Arts
Architecture: Beaux-Arts 1915
Architect: Bernard Maybeck
Photo Date: 12/09/2004
Camera: Nikon D1
San Francisco Bay Photography.
Click to Buy San Francisco Photography Online


Place of Fine Arts Theater
3301 Lyon Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
Administrative Office: (415) 563-6504
Box Office: (415) 567-6642
Fax: (415) 567-4062

Geo Code


(37.801728, -122.447682)

Latitude


37.801728 °
N 37 ° 48' 6.2"
37 ° 48.1037' (degree m.mmmm)

Longitude

-122.447682 °

W 122 ° 26' 51.7"
-122 ° 26.8609' (degree m.mmmm)

PALACE OF FINE ARTS
FROM WIKIPEDIA:

The Palace of Fine Arts was one of ten palaces at the heart of the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, which also included the exhibit palaces of Education, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Agriculture, Food Products, Transportation, Mines and Metallurgy and the Palace of Machinery.The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Romanand Greek architecture[5] in designing what was essentially a fictional ruin from another time.

While most of the exposition was demolished when the exposition ended, the Palace was so beloved that a Palace Preservation League, founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was founded while the fair was still in progress.

For a time the Palace housed a continuous art exhibit, and during the Great Depression, W.P.A. artists were commissioned to replace the decayed Robert Reid murals on the ceiling of the rotunda. From 1934 to 1942 the exhibition hall was home to eighteen lighted tennis courts. During World War II it was requisitioned by the military for storage of trucks and jeeps. At the end of the war, when the United Nations was created in San Francisco, limousines used by the world's statesmen came from a motor pool there. From 1947 on the hall was put to various uses: as a city Park Department warehouse; as a telephone book distribution center; as a flag and tent storage depot; and even as temporary Fire Department headquarters.

While the Palace had been saved from demolition, its structure was not stable. Originally intended to only stand for the duration of the Exhibition, the colonnade and rotunda were not built of durable materials, and thus framed in wood and then covered with staff, a mixture of plaster and burlap-type fiber. As a result of the construction and vandalism, by the 1950s the simulated ruin was in fact a crumbling ruin.

In 1964 the original Palace was completely demolished, with only the steel structure of the exhibit hall left standing. The buildings were then reconstructed in permanent, light-weight, poured-in-place concrete, and steel I-beams were hoisted into place for the dome of the rotunda. All the decorations and sculpture were constructed anew. The only changes were the absence of the murals in the dome, two end pylons of the colonnade, and the original ornamentation of the exhibit hall.

In 1969 the former Exhibit Hall became home to the Exploratorium interactive museum, and in 1970 also became the home of the 966 seat Palace of Fine Arts Theater.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Just for Fun - Think no Black Friday - 37.78413,-122.498184 Land's End

Think Different - 
Boycott Black Friday and Do something Cultural.


Just for Fun, Think no Black Friday
Visit Rodin's "The Thinker" at Legion of the Honor.
Land's End - GEO CODE:  37.78413,-122.498184

Auguste Rodin
The Thinker
(1879–1889) is among the most recognized works in all of sculpture. "The Thinker" prominently holds thought in the Rosekrans Court of San Francisco's Legion of Honor outdoor entry near the glass pyramid skylights added in 1995.

 "Architect George Applegarth’s design for the California Palace of the Legion of Honor was a three-quarter-scaled adaption of the 18th-century Parisian original, incorporating the most advanced ideas in museum construction."  Legion of Honor Website - History of the Legion of Honor


The Legion of Honor is located on the headlands of the San Francisco Bay, on the South Side near Pacific Heights, called Land's End. The museum is one of the oldest treasures of San Francisco. It houses a permanent collection and visiting shows. If you go, just for fun  look for the hunting scene with the dog pee-ing in the permanent collection.
The views from the surrounding area look North past the Marin Headlands and California Coast Golden Gate Recreational Area. On a clear day you can see all the way to Point Reyes and/or The Farallon Islands from Land's End. The sunsets are spectacular. 


http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/
The Legion of Honor
The Legion of Honor is located at 100 34th Avenue, at Clement Street, in San Francisco's Lincoln Park. Free parking is available around the fountain in front of the museum or along El Camino del Mar.


Address: 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94121
Phone: (415) 750-3600
Hours:
Mon Closed
Tue-Sun 9:30am–5:15pm

CURRENT SHOW:

November 17, 2012 - March 17, 2013

Think Different - 
Boycott Black Friday and Do something Cultural.



From Wikipedia:

François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin (play /ˈɡst rˈdæn/ oh-goostroh-danFrench: [oɡyst ʁɔdɛ̃]), was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture,[1] he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition,[2] although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.

Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic.
Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, but refused to change his style. Successive works brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.
From the unexpected realism of his first major figure – inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy – to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, Rodin's reputation grew, such that he became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's Fair exhibit. For example, a Japanese patron, Matsukata Kojiro, paid for some of Rodin's best castings, including "The Gates of Hell."[3]
Rodin kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades, his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.

Cool Views - Just for Fun - Aerial Pier 39 San Francisco Geo Code -37.8085395, -122.4096934



Just for Fun
Cool Views - Aerial Pier 39 San Francisco on a crowded October day. Over the pier looking out towards the San Francisco Bay, crowds enjoy fun and the weather on Pier 39.

From the San Francisco Bay Photography Aerial Collection. www.sfbayimages.com

Geocode for Pier 39 Shopping Center: Latitude: 37.8085395 - Longitude: -122.4096934

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Grace Notes



A grace note is a kind of musical notation used to denote several kinds of musical ornaments. 
"In notation a grace note is distinguished from a regular note by print size. A grace note is indicated by printing a note that is much smaller than a regular note, sometimes with a slash through the note stem (if two or more grace notes, there might be a slash through the note stem of the first note but not the subsequent grace note). The presence or absence of a slash through a note stem is often interpreted to indicate the intention of an acciacatura or an appoggiatura, respectively.
The works of some composers, especially Frédéric Chopin, may contain long series of notes printed in the small type reserved for grace notes simply to show that the amount of time to be taken up by those notes as a whole unit is a subjective matter to be decided by the performer. Such a group of small printed notes may or may not have an accompanying principal note, and so may or may not be considered as grace notes in analysis."
wikipedia


Happy Thanksgiving.