FocalPower…the blog

Last weekend was the opening weekend for Chihuly at the de Young here in San Francisco.  A huge exhibition of Dale Chihuly’s work at the de Young Museum.

Thanks to the de Young’s policy of allowing photography in the museum (just no flashes nor tripods), this exhibit makes a wonderful photo opportunity; and a great exercise in practicing your low light photography skills.  All of the exhibits are light to showcase the magic of the glass work of Chihuly.  So you will have to have a steady hand a fast camera.

The exhibit runs from June 14th through September 28th and tickets are $15 (which also gives you access to the rest of the de Young museum).  If you are in San Francisco during this period, take advantage of this photo op!

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This one almost slipped past me.  The Maker Faire is being held this weekend in San Mateo, CA.  How to describe the Maker Faire?   I think their description is best:

 Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

Check out their Program Guide for more details…a great event for kids!

There are photo opportunities around every corner at the Maker Faire.  I had something planned this weekend, but trying to see if I can wiggle out of it to head over for the day on Saturday!

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For those who are local to the San Francisco Bay Area, this coming Wednesday (April 9th) a historic event will occur on the streets of San Francisco: the Olympic torch will be making it’s only North American appearance. For Bay Area photographers, this is a wonderful chance to capture both the Olypmic Spirit as well as the protesters who will be present during the torch’s passing.

If you are planning on attending, best advice would be to take public transportation: The Embarcadero BART stop is right near the finish for the route, and the starting point can be reached by taking MUNI to SBC Park. The event is expected to start at 1 p.m. and it should take the torch about an hour and a half to traverse the approximately 6-mile route. Expect large crowds and plan to scout locations for the best shots, as well as routes to get from point to point along the route, well in advance. Due to the nature of the politics and protests around the torch’s appearance, I would expect crowds to start building by 9am or earlier.

Here is a list of sites with more information about the Olympic Torch Relay:

• Official Beijing 2008 Olympics Torch Relay site
• SFGate’s Olympic Torch in San Francisco Portal
• SFGate: San Francisco’s Torchbearers (includes the essays they wrote to earn the honor of being a bearer).

If anyone attends the Torch Bearing, please send us a link to your photos or post a link in the comments. It will be great to see the images that everyone captures of the event!
(Map courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate)

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A quick note about an upcoming photography opportunity. This Wednesday, February 20th, is a total lunar eclipse and it will be the last one until December 2010! North and South America as well as Europe and Africa will all be able to see most or all of the eclipse. A perfect opportunity to practice photographing the moon and eclipses and capture an image like the one to the right from Jimmy Westlake.

The eclipse will begin at 5:43pm PST (8:43pm EST), reach mid eclipse at 7:26pm PST (10:26pm EST), and end at 9:09pm PST (12:09pm EST). More details about the eclipse can be found at NASA’s total lunar eclipse page. (also check out the photo gallery from the last eclipse in August of 2007).

For further inspiration and tips on how to photograph a lunar eclipse, check out the following sites:

• How to Photograph a Lunar Eclipse from Mr. Eclipse
• Getting the Right Exposure When Photographing the Moon
• NASA’s Total Eclipse of the Moon page for February 20th.
• Bill Kramer’s Photographing the Lunar Eclipse

So get out and shoot!

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For those in San Francisco tomorrow night, and with no prior plans, there will be the 3rd Annual Valentine’s Day Pillow Fight in Justin Herman Plaza. It’s quite a site to experience and a wonderful chance to practice your photography skill while dogging pillows. Actually, the rules are pretty simple and well followed by (most) participants. No pillow in hand, no hitting with a pillow.

The portfolio above are some of the ones that I caught last year during the pillow fight. These photos are being displayed by the FocalPower lightbox portfolio sharing widget. The sharing widgets are part of the FocalPower professional grade photo hosting platform for sharing your photos on websites and blogs. The great thing about the platform is that the photos are already uploaded and all I have to do is copy a bit of widget HTML code into my blog posting to add the photos. Took me longer to write this sentence than to add the photos to this post!  And the platform allows me to share these photos on multiple sites, the same portfolio (with minor formatting changes) is on display on my personal photograph blog as well. Any changes I make to the contents of the portfolio are automatically seen everywhere that portfolio is shared.

Stay tuned for more info about the platform…

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