The Streets of San Francisco

The Streets of San Francisco

A view looking towards Telegraph Hill.

It was a fresh end-of-April spring day in San Francisco when I explored the area around Telegraph Hill.  This was my first trip to the fair Californian city.  Much of it looked familiar to me as topography and architecture was not unlike that from my city of birth, Wellington, New Zealand.  I happily walked up and down the very steep streets, taking photographs along the way.  Seeing a place for the first time has a very special magic.

I was reminded of Wellington…

…and the port of Lyttleton near Christchurch.

Street art dogs. Is this what the sign “curb your dog” means?

Ahh – the drama of a well-placed stop sign.

Looking back across to where I took the first photo in this post (at the top of the page).

street-scape with yellow crossing

A view from the top of Telegraph Hill with Golden Gate bridge in the distance.

Australian bottle brush with the tower behind.

My first EVER sighting of a hummingbird.

I spent ages watching these gorgeous birds…

…and trying to get photos of them…

…which wasn’t an easy thing to achieve!

At some stage I took a tram – or was it a street-car?  I like the retro-design.

I was determined to see a group of elegant Victorian houses known as the Painted Ladies. More steep climbing!

Painted Ladies with blossom 1.

Painted Ladies with blossom 2.

The cable cars were wonderful. I felt like Noddy in ToyTown.

Finally, back into the city where my hotel was.

 

Visually Conscious in New York

Visually Conscious in New York

Visually Conscious.
A small piece of street art on the Manhattan Bridge.

Recently Matthew and I were in America.  One of my favourite days of the trip was an overcast New York Saturday when Matt and I walked across the Manhattan Bridge, through part of Brooklyn,  returning on the Williamsburg Bridge.  Under a leaden sky we enjoyed unrelenting urban bleak and layers of historic grunge.  I invite you to walk with us.  (All the photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

The expert in concrete walked through a desert of the stuff.  I think this was Delancey Street.

Street art on the entrance to Manhattan Bridge.

Constant roaring trains thundered beside us.

Other visually conscious people.

Matt strode ahead usually not noticing that I had stopped to take photos.  I had to run to catch him.

This is where the “visually conscious” eye was.

Juxtaposition of glamour and grunge.

Urban textures

New York pigeon – looking slightly rough

Skyline with water tower

A wide view of the East River and Brooklyn Bridge.

YO.
Literally – a YO structure as seen from above.

Somewhere

sign of change to come

I requested that Matt pose with a couple of fellow Aussies.

Residents of Williamsburg.

I felt like I was in Eastern Europe.

Williamsburg fascinated me. It was rather stern and bleak – in a neat way.

I was entranced by the Hasidic Jews who live in Williamsburg. What marvellous clothes!

Just before returning to Manhattan over the Williamsburg Bridge – street art grey like the sky.

I was thinking about L.S. Lowry paintings  as I photographed this.

Encased within the Williamsburg Bridge, we walked back towards Manhattan.

Matthew and I were completely exhausted but it was a great walk and far more interesting, in our opinion, than glitzy Upper Manhattan.

 

Ephemeron and Ephemera

Ephemeron and Ephemera

Ephemeron
A soft-focus drawing of Mameyuri
170 x 260 mm. May 2016.

Ephemera
Mameyuri and Katsuyuki
170 x 260 mm
May 2016

Ephemeron (singular) and Ephemera (plural) mean ‘short-lived’.  The titles refer to the transitory state of being maiko in particular, and to youth and beauty in general.  Both maiko in these two small drawings; Mameyuri and Katsuyuki, have long ago given up this traditional life and are fully back in the modern world.

The photographs which I used as source photos for these drawings were taken by Lucy, my youngest daughter, in 2007 when she was 13 years old.  We joined a photo-shoot in the streets of Gion and decided to hang in there unless somebody told us to go away.  Nobody did so we took many photos of Mameyuri and Katsuyuki.  Lucy can still remember my telling her not to delete ANYTHING off her camera – including blurry photos.

Lucy, aged 13, in 2007. She was my partner-in-crime in Kyoto, helping me to gather photographic material.

Below is another drawing I did (in 2010) from the same 2007 photo-shoot.  It is also drawn from one of Lucy’s photos.  We sure had fun together, Lucy and I!

Kyoto a la Mode
Coloured pencil drawing of Katsuyuki and Mameyuri.  2010.

It seems like just the other day that Lucy and I were photographing in Kyoto together, yet she had barely entered teenage-hood.  Today, a young woman of 22, she is the age of a geiko and is pursuing her own artistic career in Sydney.

The two little drawings side by side.

Related page:  An Exceptional Day in Gion

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