This morning, I acquired the new Silverlake lens and film pack for the Hipstamatic iPhone app and tried it out on Luna. After a few attempts, I got this particularly nice portrait.
I like that even through the filter, Luna’s green eyes stand out.
She was also quite talkative, and I captured a short iPhone video where you can hear her sweet little voice:
The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at the Tuxedo Gang Hideout.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
I took this photo in downtown San Francisco almost three years ago as an exercise in cityscape photography.
What I did not know at the time was that the most interesting feature was neither the old brick buildings nor the forlorn lot, but rather the alleyway barely visible on the left side of the image. This is Elim Street, the second narrowest street in San Francisco. I explored this tiny alley in detail earlier this month, with both my big camera and iPhone on hand.
On the southwest side (adjacent to the lot), it is wide enough for a vehicle. But beyond that, it narrows down to just 2 meters, or 6.6 feet.
No stopping seems like a good idea. 6.6 feet between two large old buildings feels dark and closed-in as one might expect. I don’t quite have the arm span to touch both walls, but someone only a little taller would be able to do so.
Looking upwards, the narrow slit of sky is especially bright.
The eaves of the two buildings come quite close together at the front of the alley on 1st street.
Here is some pipework on the older brick building in the alley.
Apparently Elim Street has existed this way for quite a while. But it is uncertain how long it will last in the heavy redevelopment of downtown San Francisco. It could get squished out of existence. Or new buildings could celebrate this narrow street with their architecture. I hope it is in fact the latter.
This week’s Photo Hunt theme is easy. We have tons of monochrome photos, from art photos to snapshots and everything in between. Here is a snapshot of Luna taken this morning with a black-and-white film preset on the iPhone Hipstamatic app:
This photo, with Luna walking among the chrome pillars around CatSynth HQ, could have easily worked for last week’s theme as well.
Looking back, I have definitely moved between periods of color and black-and-white in my photography. 2010 was probably the most monochromatic year for me. Here is a monochromatic close-up portrait of Luna I used for a Weekend Cat Blogging back in 2010.
We should do some more portraits like that again this year.
My video from last week’s performance came out quite dark, and ended up being a de-facto monochromatic piece with a purple tint. I encourage visitors to check it out in yesterday’s gig report.
The Saturday Photo Hunt is up. This week’s theme is Monochrome.
The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Mind of Mog.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
For this week’s Photo Hunt theme of Steel, we once again did into the CatSynth archives for a couple of views of Luna with our metallic modernist interior design:
Technically, some of this is chrome, but I am pretty sure the metal in the black table below is in fact steel.
We opted for archival photos this week because CatSynth HQ is not the best backdrop at the moment, between the cleanup inside and construction outside, which has many things here out of place. But the scaffolding used by the construction crew is also an example of steel:
Hopefully, we can put things back in place here by the middle of this month.
The Saturday Photo Hunt features the theme of STEEL this week.
The Carnival of the Cats will be up tomorrow at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
