San Francisco Street Photos
In the early 1970s I lived in San Francisco, California, for a while. I’ve been going through some of my vintage negative and transparencies and decided to post a few street photos with the intention of adding more as I scan further images.
During that period, I did some freelance work and also worked for the Mill Valley Sun, a small weekly newspaper with its office in Mill Valley.
I spent a lot of time walking the streets. I’d go down Market Street from my apartment on Haight Street and end up in Chinatown or the financial district or North Beach, to name a few places I’d frequent often.
Although San Francisco is known as a tourist destination, the majority of my street images feature non-tourists.
There were fewer homeless on the streets, but street preachers, unusual events and interactions were in abundance, a provided a lot of opportunities for a street photographer.
Although I wandered a lot, one of my favorite locations to be was Chinatown, but not the tourist-frequented areas but those where you felt like you were in a country other than the United States.
For a white guy with a camera, I actually fit in well and got to know a lot of the locals, and my journeys ended up in a series I thought pretty successful and one which saw a lot of the images published.
This was in the pre-digital camera days, so a technical note here:
All the images shown here are scanned from 35mm black and white film negatives. The scanner I own and use isn’t ideally suited for slides or negatives. It does a better job with things like photo prints. The scans aren’t as sharp as the originals and if one tries to sharpen the images up (because they loose some sharpness and quality of the tonal range in the scanning process) it adds an undesirable amount of grain (or “noise” to those familiar with digital terminology). Consequently I find myself apologizing for the scans because they don’t match the sharpness and image quality of the original prints.
OK, enough of the technical stuff, on to the photographs.
During that period, I did some freelance work and also worked for the Mill Valley Sun, a small weekly newspaper with its office in Mill Valley.
I spent a lot of time walking the streets. I’d go down Market Street from my apartment on Haight Street and end up in Chinatown or the financial district or North Beach, to name a few places I’d frequent often.
Although San Francisco is known as a tourist destination, the majority of my street images feature non-tourists.
There were fewer homeless on the streets, but street preachers, unusual events and interactions were in abundance, a provided a lot of opportunities for a street photographer.
Although I wandered a lot, one of my favorite locations to be was Chinatown, but not the tourist-frequented areas but those where you felt like you were in a country other than the United States.
For a white guy with a camera, I actually fit in well and got to know a lot of the locals, and my journeys ended up in a series I thought pretty successful and one which saw a lot of the images published.
This was in the pre-digital camera days, so a technical note here:
All the images shown here are scanned from 35mm black and white film negatives. The scanner I own and use isn’t ideally suited for slides or negatives. It does a better job with things like photo prints. The scans aren’t as sharp as the originals and if one tries to sharpen the images up (because they loose some sharpness and quality of the tonal range in the scanning process) it adds an undesirable amount of grain (or “noise” to those familiar with digital terminology). Consequently I find myself apologizing for the scans because they don’t match the sharpness and image quality of the original prints.
OK, enough of the technical stuff, on to the photographs.
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To contact Bob Eckert for assignments, consultations or workshops, please email [email protected]
or use the contact form on the About page
or use the contact form on the About page