The Friday Cyclotouriste

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Since my previous post highlighted this marsh, I thought I’d share a B&W image made with an old Fuji S2 digital camera. The view is from deep in the marsh looking west toward Mt. Tam across tussocks of Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana). Over the course of a couple weeks, I made a series of images in this area last spring. This was one of my favorites.

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August Sander, Forester’s Child, Westerwald, 1931. Gelatin silver print, 10-3/16 x 7-1/2 inches. Copyright © SK-Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv VG-Bild Kunst, Bonn.  Deborah Bell Photographs

August Sander is one of the most esteemed portrait photographers the medium has produced. I did not know of this image, however, until discovering it in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine.

The geo-link below the photo is only accurate at the level of the town (it would be interesting to track down the exact location).

Since I’ve already digressed so greatly from the Angel Island ride report and photos I keep wanting to post, I may as well list some other (mostly contemporary) photographers that interest me (in no particular order):

• Pirkle Jones
• Joel Sternfeld
• Clyde Butcher
• Saul Leiter
• Christopher Burkett
• Michael Kenna
• Edward Burtynsky
• Stephen Shore
• Edward Weston
• Mathew Chase-Daniel
• William Eggleston
• Chris Jordon
• Clark Little
• Jim Balog

And then there’s my current favorite photographer, Laura Mcphee.

One more picture from the fair last weekend.

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Being a camera nerd, I’ve begun to notice a proliferation of videos featuring a distinctive photo processing technique using implied tilt-shift camera movements and time lapse photography. The results are videos like these which appear to show itty-bitty scale models of cities. Here’s a tilt-shift tutorial for the uber tech-savvy and the website of Ken Loutit, who helped popularize the genre with his bathtub series.

The above video was featured in an interesting academic article on bicycling advocacy by the blogger and randonneur extraordinaire Esteban.

To celebrate the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year and the exact moment — 11:28am PST yesterday — when the earth’s axial tilt is most inclined to the Sun) a gallery of images of Spring flora made on various bicycle rides over the last couple months:

From upper left-to-right and from top-to-bottom:

1. Daisies of some kind;
2. Sticky Monkey Flower (Mimulus aurantiacus);
3. native California Black Oak (Quercus kellogii);
4. native Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata);
5. a native Pacific Coast Iris;
6. native California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica);
7. another Pacific Coast Iris,
8. a Rose; and finally,
9. Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius) a troublesome invasive species supposedly wreaking havoc upon on native wildlife ecosystems.

Another random image made on my back porch. Like this picture also from my porch (or this Christmas Day image), it really has nothing to do with bicycles — just an interesting photograph I thought I’d share.

The above image was made with my new (used) camera: a Fuji S5. The lens is a Nikon 18-55mm picked up for $25 on craigslist. The autofocus motor on the lens is broken (which is why it was so cheap), but I like it because it forces me to slow down and focus the lens by hand.

You wouldn’t know it, but this is a picture of three wild turkeys (if you squint and use a little imagination you might see them). I was on my bicycle and it was dusk so all I got was this colorful blur.

Still, I think the picture kind of works as an abstract.

Riding around at sundown is usually a good time to see wildlife.  I saw three deer and six wild turkeys.

Three Turkeys (Bon Tempe Lake)

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old schwinn

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Pacific Ocean, Christmas Day 2009

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We had some heavy October rains and my riding trailed off (I’ll admit to sometimes being a fair weather cyclist). This image was made on my back porch between rain showers.