San Francisco Steets - Haight Ashbury Graffiti at it's best!

There is something really cool about returning to your home town and seeing it in an entirely new way. In all the years that I spent growing up in San Francisco, I rarely made the trip (no pun intended) to the Haight Ashbury area. But in December, I was driving through the area with my family, as we headed towards Golden Gate Park, and I saw all this great graffiti on the buildings. Not wanting to disrupt the family plans, I kept quiet and drove through. My mind was screaming "Stop and shoot some images of this!"

We drove another 1/2 mile towards the park and one of the kids said "That was really cool graffiti back there", and everyone else started talking about turning around and taking pictures there. Without any hesitation, I swung the car around and we went back, and I am glad that we did. 

The color and form in this street art is amazing. We walked around and found some really cool alleyways covered with this artistic expression.

I really like the way that the two guys sitting in the bottom left of the frame seem to blend right in with the art.

This place really is a trip (pun intended this time) and I found myself equally fascinated with the wall art and the people who inhabit this area.

 

The wife and kids were armed with their new iPhones (with a much improved camera) and they captured some really cool images.Everyone liked this "rainbow wall".

Here is my son Connor who was using the Hipstomatic app to gather some very nice shots. He has a really great eye for photography, as does my wife and daughter.

These are close-up shots of the rainbow wall (seen above). It was really amazing to see the detail in this mural.

I was drawn to the colors here, and really liked the fact that even a piece of plywood, which obviously was covering up something, could be camouflaged so well.

We took a lot of images of the walls, but I wanted to focus on the details as well.

Believe it or not, this was one of my favorite images from our walk. I saw this door handle (you can see this in the first image in this blog post) and really liked the colors and the way that something so mundane could look so interesting. What do you think? Am I nuts?

In one of the alleyways, I saw some more cool graffiti but was disappointed that cars were parked in the way of getting a full view. But, then it occurred to me that the reflection of the art onto the hood of the car actually made for an interesting photo, so I incorporated the car into the shot.

And then, after looking at the images of the car reflections, I started looking for other cars that were parked in front of graffiti filled walls to see if I could find more unique views. I found that the darker vehicles, that were fairly clean, would give me the best results. For this image, I got down low to the side of the car to find the best reflection. My goal was to highlight the reflection but still show enough of the vehicle to let you know what you are looking at. This just goes to show you that what first might appear to be a distraction to your image, may become the main subject.