Talking Pictures explores the Bay Area through photography and video, combining original work from The Bay Citizen with a weekly showcase by independent makers. I’ll be posting in-progress photography projects, innovative video and multimedia pieces, even outtakes from news assignments.
Have a photo or video story you would like to show? Then contact me at asambamurthy@baycitizen.org.
Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc., died yesterday, he was 56 years old. Within hours, Getty Images staff photographer Kevork Djansezian was in Cupertino to document a memorial service by Apple employees and devoted followers.
In advance of today's funeral coverage, I photographed Coit Tower, which has been lit in red in honor of San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Vincent Perez and Firefighter-Paramedic Anthony Valerio. Here's another frame that I liked, but had just a bit too much light from the circling cars.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12DiV)
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12DiV)
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12DiV)
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12DiV)
John Vias prowls the streets of our city at night. He has been doing so for years, always waiting until darkness has fallen and the traffic is sparse before venturing out.
His passion? Night photography. His territory: Berkeley west of 6th Street, including the Marina and Cesar Chavez Park. The result? Stunning, moody images which can take up to twelve minutes under a full moon to emerge on his camera after he has released the shutter.
“There is more of a sense of mystery at night,” says Vias, explaining his motivation. “Things look different because of the quality of the light and the angles. There’s a theatricality and drama, compared to seeing the same thing with an even wash of sunlight on it.”
The impetus to explore his neighborhood after dark came to Vias when he was honing his craft on a UC Extension photography course in 2003. Assigned to shoot a roll of film for a darkroom class, he decided to do the assignment after sunset. “I’m a night owl, so one evening I thought, ‘why not go out now’?”
Vias, who still only shoots on film, switched to color and found his métier. He speaks highly of his mentor, Tim Baskerville at UC Extension, and says he has also been inspired by photographers such as Michael Kenna, Edward Weston and William Eggleston.
San Francisco photographer John Curley has been experimenting with the 50 photo apps he has amassed on his iPhone4. For Talking Pictures, John shares some of the results of his experiments, and explains his process.
This is a beach scene near my home in Pacifica. There were many people enjoying the late afternoon sun on an unusually warm early spring day. The initial exposures were made with the iPhone's camera in HDR mode (which gives the images a wide dynamic range). In Photoshop Express, I cropped three images for the portions that I thought were the most interesting. Then I combined them with the BlendCam app. I then imported the blended image into the Camera+ app, where I applied a sepia toning with the Analog Chromogenic setting. I also used Camera+ to apply the picture frame. 
John Curley
So tell me how you got started shooting with the iPhone...
Initially, I didn't get the iPhone to take pictures, not until the iPhone 4, which has a marvelous camera, a 5 megapixel file. Not that long ago to get a 5 megapixel camera, it would have cost thousands of dollars. I remember back at the Chron [San Francisco Chronicle], when the photo department got digital SLRs, they were so much more expensive.
A few outtakes from recent stories.
Members of the Bay Area Arab-American community will rally at 5 p.m. today at UN Plaza in support of the protesters in Egypt, just hours after President Hosni Mubarak agreed to finally step down. UN Plaza has been a focal point for Bay Area Arab-Americans wanting to show their support.
I attended the rally last Saturday, not as a news photographer or as an active participant, but as a silent observer who happened to have a camera. Just a few days earlier, I had found an expired brick of black-and-white film, and so I dusted off my bulk-loader, found a couple of film cartridges, loaded up the old rangefinder and rode my bicycle down to UN Plaza, in order to document the rally. It was just something I wanted to do for myself, without being weighed down by a lot of equipment, or the pressure of deadlines.
This evening's rally will be the third one at UN Plaza. A vigil for those who died in Egypt is scheduled at the Civic Center on Saturday.
Just a few outtakes from recent assignments.
A poster for Jewish Voice for Peace at the organization's offices in downtown Oakland. The Anti-Defamation league placed Jewish Voice for Peace on its list of the "Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America"
Here are two outtakes from our Friday story about the closure of Coda Supper Club's impact on the local jazz music scene, which also ran in the New York Times Bay Area pages.
The first one was made with a 50mm lens, f1.4 at 1/30 of a second, handheld. It's not quite sharp, but I think using a flash in this situation would have destroyed the ambience of the place, and would have been too intrusive.
Daniel Fabricant and Kristine Adams dance to a Classical Revolution performance at Coda Supper Club on Tuesday, December 28, 2010. (Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen)
The second imge was made with a 200mm lens at f2.8 at 1/15 of a second, also handheld. I like this one, wish the timing was a bit better, so that the clapping was more vigorous.
The audience applauds a Classical Revolution performance at Coda Supper Club on Tuesday, December 28, 2010. (Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen)
