Frame (in Frame)

The concept of using a frame in a frame is an old one in photography. There are times it works well and then there are times that the inside frame may be superfluous. The first frame is your viewfinder (or rear LCD or that phone you’re staring at). The second frame is what is bracketing your central point of emphasis.

This week Nancy Thanki leveled a challenge to find an alternative frame to what we see in our viewfinder.

About my comment that sometimes the frame is superfluous… it’s addition by subtraction. A few leaves or branches around a shot of a beautiful lake may create a frame of some interest but ask yourself if the picture is really better with the frame. Just imagine in your mind’s eye if adding the frame is subtracting from the focal point of the image. Superfluididity aside, here are some of my frame in frame photos.

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Rare

Where did Friday come from? Wasn’t it just Tuesday? My weeks have been like that lately. It’s rare to have a slow day. No summer slowdown this year so when Ben Huberman laid down the challenge to show something rare I was stunned! Well, nothing came quickly to mind. After a little thought and scanning a few thousand photos I realized that what is rare is that slow time. The time to enjoy reading in the middle of the day, gently whirling around on a carousel or sitting on a bench watching a surfer retreat from the sea after the Sun goes down.

Have a great weekend!

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Morning

If Cheri Lucas Rowlands offered up a photo challenge to share a selfie from the morning mirror it would scare a very large percentage of the population. Yet, I remain young at heart. My morning breakfast is pretty well unchanged these last 60 or so years:

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Narrow

TGIF!

This business week end we were challenged by Ben Huberman to focus on something narrow, something slender, something with a restricted view. Ben, please excuse me, it’s been a difficult week of spreadsheets and present value analyses and grinding out a long report on a difficult property… I can’t think literally anymore.20160201-jn-DSD_9524_x1500

Maybe I’ve been reading too many books on photography but the only thing that came to mind was narrow tonal range. That reminded me of a selfie I did earlier this year but I never bothered to process the raw image. It all got started with me trying to knock off a 1905 portrait of Clarence H. White by Eduard J. Steichen. I like to steal from the masters. I found the original image in my reproduction copy of Camera Work, the quarterly publication of modern art and photography published by Alfred Stieglitz. It’s amazing to see the early 20th Century brought to life in such a narrow tonal range.

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All Over the Place

Updated June statistics on Bay Area Employment Trends Here and Bay Area Housing Trends Here.

June saw a big jump in the Bay Area labor force with a small increase in employment resulting in a big jump in the unemployment rate.

Median housing prices set an all-time high but, at the same time, four of the nine Bay Area counties had a month-over-month price drop.

Speaking of all over the place… some recent photos from a hike along the North Ridge trail of the Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve and another walk along the San Andreas Trail (as in fault line) are included below.

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Cherries on Top

Work is a four letter word! I enjoy my work; which must be some form of commentary about my personality. Regardless, my work does get me traveling all over the San Francisco Bay Area and sometimes throughout the state of California.

The cherry on top of my work is that it allows me to get out and take photos in areas that I might not ordinarily see. No need to make a special trip. Sometimes it’s just an interesting spot in the East Bay or a view of the Golden Gate or maybe it’s Palm Springs or Redding or Sacramento. All of these photos were taken while doing field work. Please don’t tell my boss! 🙂

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Details

Thanks Jen Hooks!

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Hi-Key details of a broken ornament

You suggested we share the intimate details of our world.

I looked and found my macro lens has been stuck in my camera bag for too long. I’ve been looking at the big picture with wide angle lenses for a while. You challenged me to get out of my rut!

Speaking of details… I had to look up CPI data. I’ve posted recent trend data here. If you ignore the politically scrubbed “seasonally adjusted data” put out by the BLS and look at the details you get a more interesting picture.

Have a great weekend!

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Opposites

Welcome to the second half of 2016! Where did the first half go???

A new photo challenge from Ben Huberman seeks to, “…show how op20120908-joes-flag-DSC_8509posites can tell a story about people, places, or objects.” Here are some examples that include hard and soft, light and dark, square and round and include my favorite… chiaroscuro.

Have a lovely weekend! And here’s to the 240th anniversary of our independence here in the good old U.S. of A.

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Ghosts

Where are all the people going?

San Francisco Bay Area 20160625-pac-03-DSE_1299_x1250employment peaked in October of 2015 but after a brief dip it continues to creep upward. Employment is still about 1.3% below the prior peak. The unemployment rate dropped, however, on a big decline in the labor force. The Bay Area labor force peaked in October of 2015 but it has dropped by almost 8% since then. See the updated San Francisco Bay Area May 2016 employment data here.

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Partners

This week we’ve been challenged by Michelle Weber to share photos that show sync, partnership, people in tune… well, here goes!

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