Kevin Warnock

My wife Monika and I went pumpkin shopping today at 7th Avenue and Lawton Avenue.

I took a lot of pictures of the scarecrows, which were all different. I thought they were all handmade by children, but Monika tells me that the art supply store named Michaels sells scarecrows just like these. Here is a link to my shots on Flickr. I uploaded them at very high resolution, and I shot them at f 1.4 for very shallow depth of field.

I am going to start posting video of San Francisco. When you live here it’s easy to overlook the beauty of the place. So I’m going to start taking my camera with me on routine errands to capture everyday life in the City.

This first video is taken in Yerba Buena Gardens, which is a block sized area that begins at 4th Street and Mission Streets. It’s right next to Moscone Center, the City’s largest convention center, and where Oracle World is going on starting tomorrow.

The website for Yerba Buena Gardens is yerbabuenagardens.com

One of the fun things to do at Yerba Buena Gardens is to ride the historic merry-go-round. This ride was saved from the famous old San Francisco amusement park called Playland at the Beach. It’s been restored so well you would think it’s almost new. I bought a ticket and took a ride just to make an interesting video. You can read about Playland at the Beach on wikipedia.

Finally, here’s a video of the waterfall close up. It’s a huge waterfall, half a city block long. This is just a section of it, and I don’t move around, so you can just admire the beauty and sound of the running water.

My house is in the Forest Knolls neighborhood in San Francisco. This area actually contains forest, and the underbrush is very thick – 3 feet deep in areas – making it almost impossible to walk between the trees.

This is a fire danger. For some time I’ve wanted to get my neighbors together to clear out some of the brush. However, this is a huge multiple square block area, so it’s too much for even a group of neighbors working part-time on a weekend.

Thankfully, University of California San Francisco owns a good chunk of this forest land, and they are preparing to do something about the fire danger. UCSF is holding a community meeting on October 19th at the Millberry Union at 500 Parnassus Avenue in San Francisco, at 6:30pm. UCSF has proposed two demonstration projects to reduce the fire danger, and the meeting is being held to discuss the proposals. UCSF is seeking funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

I am going to the meeting, and I invite my neighbors to join me. These trees are beautiful, and there are many homes on this hill, so clearing things out should be a priority.

My friends Shelley Leatherman and Jonathan Lott welcomed their first child into the world today, Olivia Lott. Olivia was born around 6 pm at Kaiser hospital in San Jose, California. My wife and I attended Shelley and Jonathan’s marriage in 2007. My wife and I will always be able to remember Olivia’s birthday because today is the first anniversary of our own marriage. Instead of having dinner together, we went to see the new baby in the hospital.

I shot this video on October 3rd, at the home of Jon and Shelley.