The End of Covid .... well sorta

Well the Covid restrictions are dying down here in the US at least. And as such I'm out and about photographing again.

Here are a few photos from my latest foray out and about in Silicon Valley:

Here's a then and now shot: the Uber self driving "garage" in SF was taken in 2016, the Google "garage" in 2021. Both photos were taken just a few feet apart from one another. My suspicion is that Google bought out the Uber location and knocked out the walls.

Uber's Self Driving "Garage" in 2016

Google's San Francisco "Garage" right next door in 2021

Some other self driving car observations:

Chinese company WeRide self driving vehicle spotted on the Streets of Silicon Valley

Hyundai testing at Pony.ai

Pony.ai testing Hyundai on the Streets of Silicon Valley

Nvidia Testing a Ford Fusion on the Streets of Silicon Valley

And lastly, here's a few photos of Apple's Project Titan:

Apple's Self Driving Car Testing on the Streets of Silicon Valley

Comments

2022-01-16 Memories of Another Country That is No More

I've been working on another way to digitize my old negatives. 20 years ago, I was using a Nikon Coolscan. Looking at those files now, they're ok I guess. Better than nothing. I have an Epson V750, but especially for 35mm, those scans suck. I have access to a drum scanner, but those scans take so much time and work. In any case, I've come up with a method that I'm happy with. This isn't my technical blog, so I'm just gonna show you a few images from Czechoslovakia. Now that country was separated in the "velvet divorce," one of the few country split ups that was peaceful and civil. Back in 1991 when I first visited, Czechoslovakia had recently moved from a planned "socialist" economy towards a western style more capitalist democracy. Prague was a gritty, gray, yet beautiful city mostly visited only by foreigners from the East Block. Czech out the gallery (isn't that punny?!) here . As always, words and pictures are copyright ©Michael Hal

InContinent: A Quick Drive to Osnabrück

In Continent – Dispatches from Europe: A quick drive to Osnabrück For undisclosed reasons, I had the opportunity to drive up to the city of Osnabrück, way up north. But just for a few hours.

Orthochromagic: The Black Rose

Back in the beginning of photography, film and plates were orthochromatic. Orthochromatic means the material isn't sensitive to red light. That makes processing easier, since then it's possible to navigate a darkroom, load film, and even develop "by inspection". But since any subject with the color red in it became darker with Ortho film, certain scenes became problematic. Blue skies were rendered white, skin color with more red pigment went dark, freckles and zits were emphasized. In the early part of the 20th Century, panchromatic films became the norm. Ortho film was still the norm for many technical uses of photography. For example copywork, typesetting, etc. But with panchromatic film, tonalities of the world around us were more accurately mapped to their associated gray tones. Today, when film photography itself is already a rarity, I've opted to play with the unusual characteristics of film including the color sensitivity. What happens to a red rose on a

Urban Texture

Search This Blog