Category: San Francisco

Fire In the Lower Haight

I saw this on twitter on Tuesday and my heart sank – the building over the Walgreens at Haight and Fillmore was ablaze. My first thought was that a friend of mine had lived in that building for many years. Luckily, no one was majorly hurt, the fire department did a heroic job putting out the blaze, but 31 residents (and their pets) are now displaced in a city where housing is notoriously difficult to obtain.

There’s a benefit auction being thrown for the residents, I’ll be donating my time and photography work, as well as a bag of clothes and extra household goods which have accumulated. If you’re local and have a few bags of stuff laying around, now might be a good time to send it along.

Production Team Headshot Photographer

I was contacted recently by a former co-worker, Justin Barker, who’s been freelancing as a director and is starting up his own production company. Justin’s a multi-talented producer with solid experience ranging from pre-production planning, direction, and in the field shooting. I’ve worked with him in the past on video projects and he’s someone I absolutely recommend to companies looking for a video production team. He’s preparing the launch of a new website, and he hired me to come on set and shoot head shots of the crew and some environmental coverage of them working.

I’m a big believer that head shots are both extremely important to have, but can be dull as dishwater if you aren’t careful. We used video lights for these and I included a bit of the background of the set on purpose to lend some context to the shots.

Check out a few more from on set and in the field below the cut –
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‘Valencia’ On-Set Photographer

How’s this for a cool project – take an award winning novel by Michelle Tea, break it up by chapter, and have a different director and crew film a short of their chapter – then piece the whole thing back together into a movie?

I spent a day on set with director Courtney Trouble as she brought ‘Valencia Chapter 1’ to life, starring Quinn Valentine as Michelle Tea. Other crew included camera by Moira Morel and sound by Krystle. We shot on-location at the El Rio bar on Mission Street. If you haven’t read Valencia, it’s a hilarious, raunchy, true-to-life take of queer life in San Francisco of the ’90’s. These photos may be safe for work, but the book adults-only in the very best way.

More photos below the cut, drop a line and let me know what you think.
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The Controversial ‘Esmeralda’

Busy, busy, busy! Things have been buzzing lately, and I have all kinds of fun stuff to blog in the next few weeks, including a beautiful wedding in Pt. Reyes, some behind the scenes photos, and a headshot special for next month I’ll be announcing soon.

Meanwhile, we’ve had a bit of summer breaking through the fog. Last weekend we hopped on the ferry and headed to Angel Island – I’ve lived in the bay area for 14 years and am embarrassed to admit I’d never been there before! On the way out towards the island we spotted this beautiful white tall ship docked at Pier 27.

The ship belongs to the Chilean navy and was in town for only one weekend. There’s a bit of controversy along with the visit – according to Amnesty International, this ship was used as a detention center by the Pinochet-era Chilean Government, with reports of torture and human rights violations. The Chronicle weighed in on the topic, pointing out that while the ship has a dark history, it is currently used as a training ship and carries a crew of 350 people, including women, whom only recently have been allowed to join naval service in Chile.


KQED news reported on the story as well.