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With family and friends reporting in from many corners of the country with a mixed bag of cool-to-cold temps, rain, and even snow, I’m pleased to report that California is the place to be this week 🙂 San Francisco is sunny with highs in the low 70s and a pleasant breeze.

So, this past weekend, Jeff and I got out and about early on Saturday. We headed down to the Ferry Building to buy some veggies for the week. Sunny days bring out THRONGS of people from all walks of life–locals, visitors, street performers, artists. Frankly, it can be a bit overwhelming just to buy sustainable, organic green beans!

But hey, Prince Charles visited the Ferry Building a week ago. And if its good enough for Royalty…

This is just a picture from my office one morning this week. At this time of year, the light plays some wonderful tricks on the morning mist on the Bay, just as I’m arriving at work. This picture hardly does it justice.

And if you happen to be wandering through the Presidio, take a detour through the new Letterman Digital Arts Center. The primary tenant in this new space is Lucasfilm. So tucked away among the historic-style buildings, rolling landscapes, and babbling stream is Yoda. A fun surprise…not in the tour books yet!

The primary reason that I have taken the Photography Portfolio class at Ft. Mason for so many years is the people–the instructor, my classmates, my friends. We challenge each other. We inspire each other.

Every week, we bring in works in progress, and in return, we exchange healthy critiques of each others’ work. Our instructor, Richard, is terrific at offering appropriate levels of praise and encouragement, while often picking the quirkiest bits of our work and saying “explore more of that direction…try it out and see where it takes you”.

Lately, we’ve been selecting single themes to take away as “homework”. I thought it would be fun to share the results of these first two assignments. First, simply enough: chairs. Here is what I saw during that week.

Next assignment: “take something that evokes surrealism”. Here are my interpretations.

I had about an hour to kill on top of Nob Hill this past Thursday night. The hotel where my coworkers were staying was across the street from Grace Cathedral. While I had driven past it on numerous occasions, I had never had the chance to visit.

To start, it was an enchanting evening already. The sky was a dusky dark blue, which set off the well lit gothic details of the building (built 1928-1964). Entering the cathedral, I was immediately struck by two things: 1. the choir singing a capella, and 2. dozens of white, yellow, and red ribbons of sheer fabric flowing from the front of the cathedral to the rear. These sheers were held in place by invisible line, such that they seemed to float and flow through the room. Both the choir and the flowing sheers drew me in and enticed me to sit and observe.

As I was leaving, I took notice of the heavy, bronze-like doors at the outside-center of the cathedral. These doors looked strangely familiar, so I looked them up. Coincidentally, they are replicas of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “The Gates of Paradise”–Jeff and I saw the originals this spring and 2003 on the Baptistery in Florence. My picture from the Grace Cathedral replica is below.

Now, compare these with the photos of the original door in Florence. We took these pictures in 2003–coincidentally, we photographed the same panel. (For the record, even the doors on the Baptistery are not the originals. The true originals are across the street in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo.)

I work for what many people would consider a traditional, conservative, DC Beltway firm. And yet, when the ties come off and the wine flows a bit, we’re every bit as unconventional as the next. I love it.

This week, I got to play co-host to about 30 visiting colleagues from around the country. I have known some of these folks for years, and they are friends. The new ones fit right in, like we went to college together.

One activity we planned was a boat trip (with cocktails) on the San Francisco Bay. Although the water was a bit choppy and the winds fairly persistent, we had a blast. We whisked under the Bay Bridge, past the Ferry Building, and darted in and out of the Fisherman’s Wharf piers and around Alcatraz (with perfect sunset lighting and just-right clouds).

That night, we ate dinner at Moose’s in North Beach. After some very nice wine, we sat around and talked about what the plural for moose is and whether moose travel in herds or packs or caravans or whatever. (For the record, moose are not very exciting. Predictably, the plural for moose is…moose, and they travel in herds. There are MUCH more exciting names for groups of animals: a parliament of owls, a company of parrots, a dray or scurry of squirrels.)

I think its healthy to blur that line between coworkers and friends.

I was moving some images around on the computer this evening and ran across this terriffic image of my Dad. I took this while we were in Panama in 2002. This is just one of my favorite images from that trip, and also a good reminder of how fond I am of traditional gelatin silver prints 🙂 This image was taken on a hike in the overgrown tropical forests around Lake Gatun in the Canal Zone.