More San Francisco - Night photos

While in San Francisco, attending Macworld, I spent one evening shooting pics around Moscone Center.  It was a bit of a challenge since the tripod was back in the hotel.  I wandered around the area shooting colorful subjects.  Let the photos do their own talking

Ready to rock and roll

Mirror Mirror on the "curved" wall

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts - Galleries and fountain

Theater

SFMOMA at night

Contemporary Jewish Museum
in San Francisco near Moscone

Church downtown San Francisco

San Francisco, California

City Hall in San Francisco

Since we are not regularly traveling in the RV at moment (we are in northern California and it is in Tempe, Arizona storage) I haven't been posting regularly.  will try to get back into the flow here.
Have been in San Francisco for past few days attending annual Macworld event.  Actually now called Macworld/iWorld due to the predominance of iDevices around.

Corner of City Hall

Still courses about OSX which I have attended, yet exhibits mainly accessories for the iDevices.  cases, chargers, stands, etc.  Have a few ideas for people back home and learned a lot about new OSX operating system called Lion.

Mr Lincoln sits outside City Hall

San Francisco presents so many great photo opportunities.  The other night I wandered around the Civic center area and photographed City hall at night.

HDR photo of trees in courtyard

While walking around the neighborhood near my motel, I saw these trees looking up in a courtyard.  tall sentinels in the midst of urban bussle.  I tried shooting the courtyard but the photos didn't really turn out.

Next post I visit Yerba Buena Gardens

January....drought?

Inspiration House above Nandi Pond
which is usually Full by now

Our last rain was 0.08 inches on December 15.  almost a month ago.  Usually have several inches by now.  ponds getting low. Current forecast is no precipitation in the near future (2 weeks?).  yikes.  last time this sort of drought was 1994-1995 from what I have heard and fires in summer were not pretty.  Yikes.

This Bud's for you

Same old daily weather.  low ot mid 60's during day, low ot mid 30's during day.  A friend, living in Portland area, said similar up there.  Big high pressure bubble over whole area.  Good news, it is above freezing in Tempe, AZ where our motorhome lives until mid February so not expecting problems due to freezing temps.  Bad news is it is warm and dry here and around Cali which could result in major fire issues this summer.

Other good news is sunrise and sunsets are beautiful. The tree buds are beginning to think it is March.

Bad news possibly.  more to come on this.

Last Post of the 2011

Happy New Year everyone.

Sunrise over the village duck pond

Hard to post regularly over the holidays so am spending last little bit of 2011 on this post.  This morning I headed out in the neighborhood to shoot the sunrise then some birds in nearby ponds to test out a new lens.  Sunrise and sunsets around Ananda village often are really great and there best viewed from Rajarsi or Sunset Ridge, however down in the lower village area an artificial pond was created about 3 years ago and vegetation has grown up nicely around it so I headed there.  The sun was sufficiently south to make this a potentially good spot with the right clouds and I was able to capture a nice reflection.  This photo is actually an HDR photo made from blending 3 different exposures together to capture a wider range of light.

Canada Goose at takeoff

My friend Barbara joined me after the main sunrise and we headed up to Nandi pond on the road to my house where we wanted to catch the Canada geese as they blasted off when the sun hit the pond which, at this time of the year is around 8 AM.  Last week we were up there doing the same thing, however the clouds didn't cooperate and the geese stayed in the pond until 8:45 and the light wasn't very good.  This time we got better (but not great) light so was able to at least get a couple shots.

Bufflehead Duck at Nandi Pond

Also in the pond were 3 pairs of Bufflehead ducks who dip into the bottom of the pond for food and dart about chasing each other.  They are small and hard to photograph with a short lens so we used our 2x extenders on our 70-200 mm lens to get 400mm focal length.  Since my Canon 7D camera has a cropped sensor I actually get 1.6x which is even more.

Male Hooded Merganser Duck

We photographed a bunch then headed over to Lotus Lake near the Expanding Light guest retreat where there was rumored to be some hooded Merganser ducks.  Both the Bufflehead ducks and Hooded Merganser ducks are very shy and hard to get close to.

Female Hooded Merganser Duck at Lotus Lake

As we walked around the lake towards them, they would paddle over to the other side.  Finally I went around one way and Barbara went the other.  I got lucky and found a spot with sun behind me while she herded them towards me.

Was really fun and am looking forward to many more photowalks around the village in 2012.

Happy New Year  to everyone!