Category Archives: Photography

Reflections

October 24, 2012Art, Photography, Psychological MusingsSteve Stern

Last Sunday, Michele went to the annual National Bioneers Conference and we agreed to meet at the end of the day at the Tracy Taylor Grubbs Open Studio.

One of the things that is fun about going to the same Open Studio over a period of years is watching how the artist changes. Sure, sometimes they don’t change and sometimes they change all over the place at random, but, every once in awhile, the change is growth. It is like you – in this case, I – can see the artist try to solve the same, intellectual? metaphysical? problem in a variety of ways, getting closer – but, like Zeno’s paradox – never getting there because the search is really the endpoint.

I first saw this in a Jasper Johns show at the old San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at Marine’s Memorial – more accurately, it was pointed out to me on a tour put on by the Stanford Art Department – and it seems to me this is what Tracy is doing. I have heard her talk about impermanence as a condition that interests her and, while I don’t want to speak for her, that seems to be central in what I saw last weekend (especially in her lovely iceberg paintings).

She also had on display some lovely little square images made by smoke that seemed to almost be frozen impermanence.

While Michele went to Bioneers, I took BART into The City and spent the later afternoon taking pictures of reflections.

I thought that a series of building reflections printed as small squares similar to Tracy’s smoke squares would be fun. But, sitting here, I think that these reflections reflect – sorry – my interest in what is reality vs. the distortion of reality as my projection. I see a scene – oaks and rolling, golden, hills on Highway 120 by Oakdale come to mind – and photograph it. Only when I look at the image, back home on my monitor, do I notice the power lines and towers, the dead, dry grass. What I saw is not what was there. Building reflections offer a similar distortion; the reflection on a building – so prominent in my mind’s eye – is often overwhelmed by the building I almost didn’t see.

With all that preamble, here are several reflections.

And a final picture from Southern California where the hold on reality may not be as strong.

An east side of the Sierra Nevada detour

October 18, 2012California, Photography, Sierras, TravelSteve Stern

On Tuesday morning, Aston and Eileen got up early and drove to San Francisco to go to work and we started a little later to drive to Lee Vining to meet Karen Amy and her friend Chris. The first stint took us along the east shore of Lake Tahoe so we could marvel at its blue gem-likeness set in a granite ring. From there, we picked up Highway 50 to crest the Carson Range at Spooner Summit and drop down into the Great Basin of Nevada just south of the state capitol, Carson City.

From there, it is Highway 395 all the way south to the backdoor to Yosemite at Lee Vining. We cross back into California at Topaz Lake about 60 – some odd – miles south of coming into Nevada . I was born in San Francisco and have lived in California all my non-Army life. I was brought up to think of myself as a Californian more than as an American. As much as I love Nevada, I think of California as my home and even though we have only been in Nevada for a little over an hour, I get a little coming home tingle as we look down the valley with California in the hazy distance. This border crossing, back into California at Topaz Lake seems so archetypical: we drive through high Nevada – it may be dry enough to be called – desert, cross a long flat pass at about 6,000 feet, and then head down into the Topaz Lake Basin with green fields on the California side.

The Walker River flows into Topaz Lake and we go up river as we head south up a long canyon. About 15 years ago, the Walker River overflowed taking out the road and we had to detour about 50 miles out of our way to get to Death Valley. A year or two later, we drove through the denuded canyon on a new road and marveled at the devastation. Now, going up canyon, I am not sure, even, where the river took out the road.

Our plan is to meet Karen at noon at the Mobil Station cafe but we start to run late because we keep running into unexpected traffic controls. It turns out that we are caught up in construction of Digital 395, a 583-mile fiber network whose motto is Connect on the Wild Side. The project seems to be a public/private partnership with lots of semi-official – but unidentifiable – sounding names like the Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium and the California Advanced Services Fund. Among others, it is funded by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Commerce under the Recovery Act. I couldn’t help thinking that alot of the people who moved here to get away from civilization and are now getting broadband would use it to badmouth big government. Our trip through Bridgeport is the worst with twenty minutes waits for a slow, controlled, crawl through town which is having all its roads repaved;

^{iPhone photo by Michele Stern}

meanwhile, Karen has shown up an hour and an half early. We finally show up about 30 minutes late and the four of us have a quick lunch so we can scurry twelve miles back to Conway Summit at 8,138 feet where the Aspens are starting to turn.

^{Portrait by Michele Stern}

After we wandered around the Conway Summit area, going to Virginia Lake and then back down to the view overlooking Mono Lake and, way in the distance, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, south of Mammoth.

By now, Michele and I were in full tour guide mode, wanting to go down to the edge of Mono Lake to better show it off.

Mono Lake is, of course, not a lake but a dead sea and it is the major rookery for Seagulls on the west coast. Still, it is always a shock to see them here, hundreds of miles – by road, at least – from the sea (which is, after all part of their name). But, here they are, chowing down on Alkali Flies and Brine Shrimp. Somehow, they seem both tamer – as in less frenzied – and wilder – as in less dependant on humans – than on the coast. As we watched the Seagulls, I ended up watching the soft waves, lapping the shore, and marveling at how different these waves are from the waves at Virginia Lake, 45 minutes and 3,200 vertical feet away.

By now it was getting close to our 4 o’clock cut off time, so we took a quick peek down the June Lake loop, looking for fall color, and then headed back over the hill. Karen and Chris to Yosemite Valley and Michele and myself to Portola Valley. At 8600 feet, it was already winter at Tuolumne Meadows.

Going to Boise

October 11, 2012Americana, Photography, TravelSteve Stern

Last weekend, we drove – with Aston and Eileen – to Boise Idaho to see Ophelia and Peter for Ophelia’s birthday. It is a trip that I have never made but – in the map of my mind’s eye – I thought that Winnemucca would be about two thirds of the way. I sort of picture Idaho as being over Nevada and Oregon as being over California. In reality, Eastern Oregon is over a big hunk of Nevada and, after going north from Winnemucca deep into Oregon, one is then required to go east to Boise. It turns out that Winnemucca is about the halfway point and the drive, north and then east, takes on the qualities of a Are we there, yet? atmosphere.

I mean Are we there, yet? in the best possible way. This is the kind of country that I love to drive through – just to drive through – even without the reward of Peter and Ophelia at the other end. The drive was a delight for us. It was photo-less interstate driving all the way to Winnemucca where we made a left to head north into Oregon. (Winnemucca is in the Humboldt Basin in the Great Basin meaning that everything drains to the Humboldt Sink rather than some ocean.) Heading north, we slowly climbed out of the Basin running along side Santa Rosa Range.

The land is more Drylands than Desert with dry grass and soft mountains. While we are still in the Basin, the land is spotted with small farms and ranches. Not small in size but small in the amount of money that can be eked out. As we go north, the ranches become even more hardscrapple and the land becomes more dramatic. This is Red Country, independent and poor, not acknowledging that they are grazing their cattle on our – the American people’s – land.

We leave Nevada with the de rigueur casino where we have an early lunch and try our hand at the penny slots (Michele won five cents which she then lost on the nickel machine),

then we drive out of the Basin and through the high Drylands of Easter Oregon where the living is even more scrapple.

Then, down into the Owyhee River Basin – which drains into the Snake River and then into the Pacific Ocean – which seems both richer and more dramatic,

and into Idaho where we got a celebratory cup of coffee – technically a capuccino, in my case – knowing we only had 41 miles to go.

From there it was through the Owyhee Mountains where we can look down into the Snake River Basin and, then, it is an easy hop to Boise where we go for a walk along the actual – flowing to the sea – Snake River.

To be continued…

An amazing photograph of skydiving into Burningman

September 15, 2012Americana, PhotographySteve Stern

I wish I knew more about this photograph , although it is pretty much self explanatory.

Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance

August 17, 2012Around home, Cars, PhotographySteve Stern

^{From Corvette Expert Jim Gessner, memory by Steve Stern}

One of my first car memories and my first racing memory was watching a Mercedes Benz and Corvette race for the Del Monte Trophy on the winding, very narrow, town roads of Pebble Beach. (We were kids and, as the Corvette with the bigger engine lead the MB 300 SL, we said such pithy things as Nothing beats cubic inches, then when the much more expensive MB passed the Vet, we said Except cubic money.) In those days, before actual racetracks, we all got to stand very close to the action. The Pebble Beach race has moved to the Laguna Seca racetrack and the attached car show has become the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, probably the best carshow in the world, with an admission of $250 which does keep the hoi polloi pretty far from the action (the VIP tickets cost $600 and do include lunch [which proves, once again, that there is no such thing as a free lunch]).

To make the cars more accessible, the organizers have started the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance. The cars that are entered into Sunday’s show are encouraged to take a tour around the area on Thursday. While they don’t have to tour, if two cars are tied in points, the car that has been on the tour wins. On Thursday, Michele and I went down to the Monterrey Peninsula to check it out. Once again, we are able to stand very close to the action.

^{1924 Rolls-Royce 20 HP Barker Tourer}

^{1955 Mercedes Benz 300 SL}

^{1954 Ferrari 500 Mondail Pinin Farina Spyder}

At the end, when all the cars are parked, unbelievably close.

^{1925 Rolls Royce Phantom 1 Baker Sports Torpedo Tourer}

But out on the road, listening to the cars go by, for a car nut like me, is thrilling. Getting close and seeing the details just adds to the thrillingness.