Battery Kirby and the Golden Gate Bridge

Battery Kirby was built in 1899 and active 1900-1941 and named for Edmund Kirby of the 1st U.S. Artillery, Brig. Gen. of Volunteers, who died 28 May 1863 of wounds received at Chancellorsville, Virginia, during the U.S. Civil War. The battery has experienced some graffiti, if you look at the skull in the second image you will notice the nose is a head and the jaw is the shirt of a man hidden in the skull. From the battery you get a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge and if you continue down you will see a beach that also has a great view of the bridge.

Bayshore Roundhouse

I don't know what it is about graffiti that makes a place look like a cool place, maybe its because of the bright colors and the creative and elaborate drawings. I wish I could create masterpieces like some I've seen. I don't know if I would feel the same if it showed up on property I owned. But you see it everywhere old buildings, trucks, buses, train cars..................the list goes on. This is the Bayshore Roundhouse in Brisbane, it was used by Southern Pacific it was built in 1912 and serviced steam and diesel until it closed in 1982. In 2001 a fire destroyed half of the 16 stalls the roundhouse had. There is talk of restoring it and making it a railroad museum. There is even a registration form for the National Register of Historic Places filed.

Most of these images were taken with a wide angle lens. they tend to distort towards the corners. Notice the bucket in the lower right in the image below it is from barrel distortion common with wide angle lenses. If you had straight lines around the edges of the image barrel distortion would look like this. I did not fix it because I think it ads interest to the image.

Chinatown 2012

I recently took a trip to Chinatown in San Francisco they are celebrating their New Year which took place on January 23rd. There is a parade taking place on Febuary 11th. The great thing about HDR is it makes me practice bracketing, something I was lazy about before HDR. Now that I have my camera set up for bracketing, if I am shooting something that is static (not moving such as people) I leave it set up to bracket. Sometimes I find one of the braketed exposures (a + or - exposure) nails the exposure. Like I said I would not recommend bracketing for people because it kills the moment. It would be a shame to have a great expression that was over or under exposed.

The shot below is not HDR one exposure covered the full dynamic range. It was under exposed to saturate the color. All the rest are HDR.

Byron Hot Springs Hotel HDR November 11 2011

This is my first attempt at HDR (high dynamic range). Its a photography technique where several photographs are taken at different exposures from under exposed to over exposed and then combined to produce a higher dynamic range than the camera can capture in a single exposure. The photos were taken at Byron Hot Springs Hotel built in 1914. There have been two other hotels built here but they both burned down. Movie stars including Clark Gable and Fatty Arbuckle came to the baths. Brown wiskey bottles marked "Jos. Kennedy" dating back to prohibition have been found on the site. During World War II the hotel was used as a interrogation camp.

The stairs were covered with marble (some of it is still on the steps). The fireplace to the right of the staircase has bricks made in Richmond and Livermore. The staircase is right inside the doors in the photo above.

There has been a fire in the kitchen and scrap metal collectors have taken the stove, the heater and serveral other things shown in snapshots taken back in September 2008. All the plumbing in the kitchen has been pulled down and the hot water heaters are knocked down and moved. I wanted to shoot a HDR of the stove but I was too late. I have heard of plans to restore the site, but I see it being destroyed not much left. Since my last visit whole walls have been knocked down.

Not only have people been taking things from the site, they are leaving things also. I saw everyting from old hot tubs, dump trucks, mobile homes to this hearse below. I hope the dearly departed had departed before the accident.