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Friday Slide Show: Along Pacheco
5 March 2021
One neighborhood we never get tired of walking through takes us along Pacheco as it winds its way toward Golden Gate Heights. The large redwoods and pines keep it mostly in shade with spotlights of sunlight hitting exotic plantings like they were studio movie stars.
On a long ago afternoon, we stumbled wearily out of the bunker to take a late walk along Pacheco and happened to see an elderly woman spending the hour before dinner in the long shadows of her front room reading a thick book. She was so intent on the story she neglected to turn on the floor lamp next to her wing back chair.
It was such a peaceful scene we've never forgotten it. Sometimes when we sit down to write, we imagine we are writing to her.
We always look in the windows as we walk along Pacheco.
The house has since been sold and everything torn out and remodeled for the Jetsons and their large family who now live there. Only our memory of that elderly woman with her thick book in that enveloping chair enjoying the last light of day remain.
We always look in the windows as we walk along Pacheco. There is one front window that has scenes from a doll's life that change every week. And another with a gorgeous flower arrangement that changes just as frequently.
We don't photograph those things because we feel it's a bit intrusive. Yes, there's no real expectation of privacy when you put up a window display but still. If ethics don't get you, the reflections will.
Instead we watch how the light falls on the flora along the sidewalk. These are very difficult shots but they all look great in the optical viewfinder. In this case we were shooting with the Nikon D200 and the 43-86mm Nikkor combination we've grown fond of.
It's another thing when we look at the Raw files demosaicized on the screen. Ugh. How are you going to do justice to the hot highlights and those deep shadows devoid of detail?
The editing is arduous with plenty of wrong turns. Even after working on this set late into the night, it can only be considered provisional. We might have done things differently, might still do them differently, on another day.
That is if we aren't out walking along Pacheco and its neighboring staircases and streets, all of them full of surprises in the late afternoon light.
