Topical Tuesday (10)

Welcome to my first Topical Tuesday of 2010! By coincidence I wrote 9 for 2009 (which lets me start 2010 with #10), there will be many more for this year as I will try to do one for every week.  Above is a random generated Blog Post Collage of my posts on Facebook.  Ironically it pulled entries about running, movies, the dog, music, yet not one photography related post.

Since many things that happened this week will be other blog posts, this week’s Topical Tuesday will focus a lot on my one day trip through Berkeley with my friend Gaius.  I haven’t been to Berkeley since I first bought my M8 years ago. It was great to get photos of other things with the M8, someday when I buy an M9, I’ll have to bring it to the city as well.

Unlike my first trip to Berkeley (photos of which I’ll have to post in another blog), we were more trying to hang out then go on a long photo walk. So the photos are more things we happened to see than things we sought out for colors, textures, leading lines, etc.

One of my favorite parts of the day was visiting a chocolate counter, getting some samples of very dark chocolate and seeing this display of all the ingredients.

We didn’t stop for coffee in the city (though we probably should have), I did notice this sign for both its message and the probably intentional gritty condition of the sign.

This double stacked bus (I’m not sure what to call it), was in part to raise awareness on conservation. Gaius and I were joking that if it really was used as a bus the extra weight would actually make it a fuel waster.

One of my late father’s favorite photography subjects was flowers, particularly a single flower. When I saw this flower, I’m not even sure what type, I was just struck by its beauty, I had to take it in his memory.

Being a large city, I of course found an example of graffiti that was quite beautiful, at a local junior high.

Which leads to a cute scene at Gaius’s apartment. He has a cat named Catullus (which means little cub in Latin). He told me he knew he’d name a cat that before he even had took in this beautiful creature who was once a lonely stray. He has photos all around the apartment of a tiger at Catullus’s eye level, so he can imagine that he is the tiger. It took quite a few shots to take this (especially as I took it with my iPhone), yet it came out well.

Colleen’s mom is a big believer in practical gifts. One Christmas gift I got from her was a gift card to McDonald’s. Since I don’t eat a lot of fast food I actually had to look up on my iPhone where there was one, and found one not too far from my home. When I went there I found a taxi cab in the parking lot and while it’s likely only the driver took the cab there, had fun imagining someone taking a cab to McDonald’s to get the limousine feel.