Lazy lazy lazy ...

Yep, it's one of those "8:30 and no picture yet" days. Not only that, but I just can't find anything that floats my boat with the D70.

Alas, there's always "Photo Booth" on the Mac.

This is Comic Book filter -- kinda low light.

De Young...

The architecture of the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park.

Carnak puts the envelope to his forehead -- "In the upper floors of this building"

He tears open the envelope -- "Where do you not want to be in case of an earthquake larger than about a 5?".

But it is a very interesting building. I'm told it's a pretty good museum too.

My first 2 hours of work today...

Before

After

Sick, buggy tree...

So, the questions of the day are:

1) What the HELL is that bug in my tree?

2) How do I kill it?

I'm off to the local plant-selling-place to ask those very questions.

The poignency of Memorial Day...

On my days off, I often go to Starbucks in the morning. The nearest Starbucks is currently directly across the street from the Golden Gate National Cemetary.

Since I've had a lot of "it's 10pm and I haven't taken any pictures yet" days lately, with the cemetary decorated for tomorrow's festivities, I decided to swing by and take some pics early for a change.

I took about 20 shots, with lots of angular shots of the headstones in neat rows, with thousands of flags. This one caught my eye.

Each stone had a flag lovingly set about a foot in front of it. As I looked down one row of stones, I saw this flag fallen, and went up to put it back. It seemed important to capture the image before I righted the flag, because it spoke to me about loss, sadness, and the randomness of death. The fact that the stone was for an wife and infant daughter of the soldier buried next to them didn't help. I honestly can't say that I've ever seen a "dash" listed the way that it was for the daughter (Oct 25-29, 1965).

I'll put the other pics up on the flickr page.

The papillion part of Clemmy comes through...

Clementine is part papillion and part poodle. The papillion usually only comes out one ear at a time, but when she's excited about performing a trick and getting a treat, she'll often go both ears up.

Bottle Brush...

Caryn picked up the camera on our way from the Dog sitter's today and snapped this picture of the bottle brush plant in the park across from Shura's.

I liked the interplay of the tree trunks against the red flowers of the bottlebrush.

FogFall

Marine Layer creaping over the mountains of Brisbane, just south of San Francisco.

The fog rides over the mountain and slowly falls down the hill. We call it fogfall, and it is so interesting to see the blanket rolling down and over the crest. Tendrils and fingers of cloudy moisture extending towards the bay.

One of these 2 cut one...

Now, I'm not pointing fingers or anything, but someone in this picture just pooted.

Was it a case of "he who smelt it dealt it", does that happy look on the puppy belay a stink in progress?

Mum's a poppin...

I liked the way that the buds of the mum seem to pop out of the background on this picture. It gives a real 3-D feel to the picture.

By the skin of my teeth...

YIKES!! It's 11:28, and I haven't taken ANY pictures yet...

Andy picks up the camera, which is set to "landscape" aka "flash off" and snaps a picture at me.

Post time: 11:30!

The verdant Sonoma wine country...

The last day of touristy-stuff with Shonna took us to the Wine Country of Sonoma. This picture is taken from the deck of the tasting room at what used to be Lake Sonoma winery (I'm sorry, I can't remember the new name).

Niece in the city...

Click for a larger version

We took Shonna, our niece from Virginia, to Pier 39 today. While waiting for the bay cruise to pull in, I looked up and saw her with these 2 great SF landmarks (Coit Tower, TransAmerica building).

Dirty, dirty puppy...

Click for a larger, dirtier picture!

The puppies went digging this morning. Caryn caught them and snapped this pic. It was far cuter than anything I could have come up with.

As much as this guy hates baths, I'm surprised he risked it...

Not my favorite "Pic of the day"...

Click for a larger version

Ok, this really sucks. We took our niece to Alcratraz for the night tour tonight. I got 97 pictures of The Rock, then got back to my car and found this.

The evil good-for-nothing miscreant punk(s) took our little portable GPS navigation system and left us with a mess. We had to drive home (about 20 miles) in the cold San Francisco night air with no window.

Crime sucks. Criminals suck.

Someone walked to the ocean...

Sometimes pictures just throw themselves at you. I needed to go into the city, so I decided that I would swing by Ocean Beach on my way in and snap some pics. I couldn't find a parking spot until almost all the way to the cliff house, but when I finally did, I stepped out of the car, and saw this.

The footprints speak to me -- they speak of action, without action. It almost seems like that old "footprints" story about walking with Jesus.

Got my evening all planned out...

That's "Tylenol" and "Nyquil" (actually, both of these are generic substitutes, but I don't feel well enough to try to spell the generic names).

As you might guess, I'm still feeling unwell.

I'm off to bed early tonight.

Feelin' yucky lazy picture day...

I've got either a cold or serious allergies, and I just don't feel like taking pictures. But, I can't miss, so you get the lazy picture today.

Sorry -- maybe better one tomorrow...

Mother's Day Orchid...

Sorry for the short description today. It's been a busy, busy Mother's day, and I'm just now sitting down to pop a picture up before bedtime.

This is Andy's gift to his mom -- a very nice Orchid.

Point Bonita Lighthouse images...

Click for a larger version

We went on a walk up to the Point Bonita lighthouse today. It was a beautiful day which afforded me several (148 to be exact) pictures.

This one has some nice focal contrast.

Other nice pics can be found on the Flickr page.

Very Sleepy Puppy

click for a larger version
This is what it looks like when the puppy plays hard all day -- especially the evening after puppy social.

More rear curtain ...

Yesterday's picture used rear curtain slow sync. Today at puppy class, I decided to play around with it some more -- this time in a lighted room. See the "ghost dog" that passed by on the left of the picture?

Slow sync flash / rear curtain ...

Click for a larger photo

I found the slow sync flash (rear curtain) feature of the D70. I set it on a tripod, in a darkened room, and grabbed an LED flashlight.

Slow sync flash causes the shutter to be open longer than the flash illumination time. Rear curtain means that the flash fires at the end of the shutter open period. What this allows is for the camera to gather ambient light (and movement), followed by the illuminated flash freezing the frame in crisp detail.

It's a neat function, and one that I enjoyed playing with...

Low, low, low tide -- and our seal returns ...

At lunch today, there was an intensly low tide on our side of the bay. It's always bizzare to see all the stuff that's normally under water.

One thing was revealed was our old buddy the pacific harbor seal from April 25th. The good news is that he seems to be fine -- he moved quite a bit, looks wet, and was actually seen swimming around later after the water returned. Below -- see a closeup of the circled area from above. Each picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.

How much is that kitty in the window?...

One thing you should know about this picture is that it was taken at 10:00 at night (don't you love speed flash?!?!). The colors of the bricks and the foliage is hightlighted by the whole "creepy cat eyes" phenomenon.

Our niece, visiting from Virginia

Meet Shonna, our niece. She is a college student from Virginia. She'll be staying with us for about 2 weeks, and we couldn't be more thrilled. I'm quite sure that you'll be seeing more of her from time to time while she is here, as her visit gives us an excuse to visit all the cool SF Bay Area sites (Alcrataz, wine country, BOB, etc).

Houses in Pacifica on a beautiful blue sky day...

Click for a larger version

This was taken from the parking lot of the elementary school where Caryn is having a crop today. I tried to take pictures of the view of the ocean from that spot (it is BREATHTAKING), and I will eventually get that shot in this blog, but it was just a tad hazy, so you'll just have to settle for this.

I like the contrasting color and the clarity of the shot. I like the way the eye is immediately drawn to the orange house near the center. I also like the way that the other orange house (near the bottom left hand corner) seems to be peeking out from its hiding spot and winking.

Lavender...

Our lavender the grows by the front door is blooming a lot lately. Maybe it is the late rain, or the relatively warm temps over the last few days, but whatever the cause, it is all kinds of purple at the Franson household.

Hangers...

When you do a picture a day, and it gets to be 10:00 and you haven't taken any yet, you take what you can get.

In this case -- it's a shot down a "tunnel" of hangers. Colors, shadows, patterns, etc. I thought it was REALLY lame when I first saw it, but as I looked, I found that I became more and more intrigued.

Oceanscape does not equal landscape, right?

Click for a larger view

I told you I was going to cut down on the landscapes, but I didn't say ANYTHING about seascapes. I really like this one because of the spray -- it conveys action. Plus, anything with BOB in it is OK with me!

Serious "awwwww" factor here...

Ziggy had his surgery today. He was "neutered". The receipt actually read "Castration", which is a pretty painful thing to read, being a guy.

Anyway, the picture behind the sad picture is Ziggy home in his elizabethan collar. It's pretty hard to look at without going "Awwwww".