Posts tagged "cityhall"

City Hall, Doubled

An accidental double exposure of City Hall, San Francisco.

SF, Union Town?

One of the more surprising things about living in San Francisco is that I'm now a part of a union. Never in my lifetime of working in tech did I imagine that would happen. However, now that I work in the public sector, union life is bustling. I'm very proud to be part of a union. I see its positive impacts everyday, from the pay rises I didn't have to personally bargain for, to the additional time off each year, and in a lot of little things as well.

Learning about all of this also got me to learn about the unions that protect the working class in the Bay Area.

So when I heard there was going to be a rally outside SF City Hall in support of the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), I knew I had to go. San Francisco's media industry isn't as large as LA's, so our media workers make even less and have fewer protections. However, many Bay Area companies are responsible for the challenges we are now seeing. Decades of breathless tech solutionism and optimism with little concern for its ethical or real life consequences have led to the collapse of many industries, and people's livelihoods.

Although I now own a full frame DSLR (for bird photography), I ran there instead with a Yashica Mat-124G TLR camera from 1970, and three rolls of Kodak T-Max 400 film. Later that night, I developed the film in Rodinal in my bathroom. While I'm interested in some applications of AI (it has been useful in automating some tasks, for example), I am less positive about the creative applications. I started to learn to develop film this year, warts and all, partly as a response for that. It calms me to have a physical copy of a film negative that I can hold.

Many people enthusiastically supporting the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Plenty of slogans.

Placards.

It was a good crowd.

All kinds of signs!

All of our workplace rights today were won through similar collective actions in the past.

Media workers really have a raw deal, and there is no doubt that we should be supporting their strike against the studios.

Medium Format, Developed Medium Well

I'm not actually a very handy person. It's amazing that I am able to load film at all in a change bag, into a reel, into a tank, and then get pictures out of it. Anyway, this was the first ever medium format color film that I developed myself at home: clearly, I put too little chemistry. I still like the pictures, and I like that I'm now able to post stuff like this instead of being a perfectionist.

Part of the reason I shoot film and develop it myself is really to learn, and you don't learn without making mistakes.

Anyway, some photos from Drag Up, Fight Back rally: all photos shot on Fuji GW690II, some kind of Portra (400?), developed in Cinestill C41 kit, and scanned on an Imacon Flextight 848 scanner.