Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Dropping in on Downtown San Jose, Ca

The other day, I met up with Steph otherwise known as schmoo for a San Jose photowalk...yeaaaa. It does not get much better than going shooting with Steh no matter where the location.

 I had a little time to kill before I met up with steph so I went to the farmers market at San Pedro Square to see what they had to offer.



Met this man making one of my fav foods...Naan in a traditional tandoori oven. I still have not figured out how they transported such a heavy item. Not only was the oven super hot, it must of weighed a ton.


Since Steph does nothing ordinary, she met me by dropping in with flair and panache.


 For some reason there seemed to be a lot of fire engine activity that day. Everywhere we went, we heard and saw fire engines speeding around.



During the mid day light, walked around a bit trying to find photo subjects. Not so easy with the high contrast of sunny San Jose.



I stole this idea of a self portrait from Steph. Her imagination and vision for self portraits is way beyond my skill level.

 When night started to fall upon us, we were at City hall.

In the window display, they had some seriously disturbing art.



At the end of the night, Steph and I ended up at Sanatana Row where photography became way more difficult. Not because of the subject matter but because of the security and the San Jose police department. During the next few shots, a security guard informed us that our type of photography equipment was not welcomed there and we had to seize taking pictures. Since I did not comply, they called the San Jose Police....we were next told to either leave the premises or get arrested for trespassing. Not much of a choice but rather risk any more drama, we left.

Thanks Santana Row for being so silly with your anti-dSLR policy and making us photographers the focus of your duties while treating us like criminals. I am sure the people of San Jose are grateful that their tax money is going to such a worthy cause.



While at the end of our photo-walk was full of drama and disappointment, the walk in general was a great time especially since I spent some time with the great schmoo. Next time hopefully we won't attract so much attention. I think in total, we had two San Jose police officers and six security officers escorting us out of Santana Row. I am such a threat, watch out world....Dan is out there taking random pics near you.....Be scared....be very very scared :-D

2 comments:

Stacey Fang 方芃筑 said...

How cool! :) People in San Jose are lucky. Check out San Jose Center of Performing Art (interesting architect), SF Jtown (some old style japanese houses), also the beautiful shorelines at Shoreline at Mountain View Park but that is in Mountain View.

dadwtwins said...

Thank you for the suggestions ;-)