Against my better judgement (health), I woke up from my disco nap and headed down to Etiquette Lounge to celebrate the “party dress birthday” of Halle, Michelle, Liisa who were turning 21 (again) and Peter who was turning 30 (again).
Etiquette Lounge
Civic Center, San Francisco, California
Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso 800, 16mm (24mm)
Etiquette Lounge
Civic Center, San Francisco, California
Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso 800, 16mm (24mm)
[liberals, dress codes, and photos of peeps after the jump]
A couple people didn’t come because they thought it was a costume event. The only costume you needed was the dress code to get into Etiquette. That’s a good thing because I haven’t had a “party dress” since my cub scout troup did a skit—though at the time, a couple girls in my third grade class said I make a cute girl. Unfortunately, Mager got turned away at the door because he was wearing a baseball cap and shorts. I thought he read the Yelp reviews too…
Being liberal
Halle sent me the invite in order to celebrate people pitching in to get her her birthday wish: two sets of XO Laptops!
That’s pretty cool because, coincidentally, I found out that I’ve recently become a liberal!
What a lot of people don’t realize is that my “bleeding heart” pretty much can be summarized as “more cute, furry animals and less humans.” Luckily, the only proven way to do the latter is to make them educated and rich. So… Go OLPC!
(I used to be big on the environment until that was co-opted by libertarians after Al Gore started to do keynote presentations. I’m sorry, voluntary pollution credits isn’t going to cut it. Go back to school and take a first year public finance course.)
Okay… that wasn’t why I showed
The real reason I showed was because Halle never allows me to take photos of her. I mean like never…
111 Minna, SoMa, San Francisco, California
Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/16sec, iso 640, 35mm (47mm)
I don’t know why. She allows others to photograph her. I chalk it up to being from Cleveland. Shit. If I came from Cleveland, I’d probably feel the same way about having my picture taken by a Pittsburgh boy.
Being there
As soon as I brought out my kit, a club promoter noticed me. The misfortune of shooting in nightclubs is the only acceptable kit screams “photographer.” This is a big damper on my personal style of photography, but has the benefit of allowing me to pretend to be busy fiddling with some really complicated setting on my Nikon when in actuality I’m just being shy. Luckily, most bar owners and promoters in the area are really nice. Hopefully I can make their bar (and them) look cool…
Etiquette Lounge
Civic Center, San Francisco. California
Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso 800, 17mm (25mm)
It got insanely crowded pretty quickly, but if you were a good dancer, you could make your own space as this girl did.
Etiquette Lounge
Civic Center, San Francisco. California
Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso 800, 16mm (24mm)
I’d say I wish I could dance this well, but really if I could, I’d be too shy to dance so the talent is put to better use in someone else.
There were a number of people I recognized or who recognized me. My favorite was watching Walter ham it up for the camera and seeing Filip’s reaction.
Etiquette Lounge
Civic Center, San Francisco. California
Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
DxO Optics Pro, DxO Film Pack
1/40sec @ f/2.8, iso 800
Processing settings
The images from the party are all batch processed. For your edification and for my deletion of sidecar files, here are the settings I used in DxO Optics Pro:
DxO Optics: Chromatic aberration, Intensity +100, Size +5
Sharpness: Unsharp mask amount: +1, Radius +.5, Theshold +4
DxO Noise: Luminance +70, Fine detail +0, Chrominance +100, Gray EQ +50
White Balance and Exposure: Exposure compensation +0; Highlight recovery: Slight, Raw white balance: (various)
DxO Color: Color Rendering: Fuji Astia 100F, med-low contrast, med-high saturation; Film Grain: Fuji Velvia 50, intensity +100 24×36 +.3.4, Smart vibrancy +5
DxO Lighting: Auto settings: Slight, Strength +88
And a keeper…
And a parting shot (hand edited) of and for the beautiful birthday girls…
Etiquette Lounge
Civic Center, San Francisco, California
Nikon D200, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/30sec @ f/2.8, iso 800, 26mm (39mm)
Thanks for the invite, it was fun! I can almost forgive you for being scorpios.
Almost.
Marc hints at the problem here. Put simply, the problem is that carbon footprint is an externality.
Don’t know what an externality is? Go back to school, take a first year public finance class.
Think a pollution market solves it? Hmm, you realize you’re talking about ownership of air right, where did that get us with ownership of companies? You realize that we’re just talking about efficiency here. Morals are a different matter.
Not an easy problem.
One thing you can guarantee though is reading Atlas Shrugged will make only make you dumber to the problem.