Category: photography

Camera Obscura

According to Wikipedia: “A camera obscura (Latin; “camera” is a “vaulted chamber/room”, “obscura” means “dark”, camera obscura = “darkened chamber/room”) is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.”

According to me, a camera obscura is one of the fun, wacky, quirky things I discovered in my first tentative days living in the Bay Area.

Down at Ocean Beach, over by the Cliff House, there is a really wonderful camera obscura that was installed in 1946.

Just for whimsy, it’s actually shaped like a camera (the camera obscura was a precursor to pinhole cameras and the beginnings of photography).



Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011

The camera obscura at the Cliff House used to be right next to the Musee Mechanique, a mesmerizing collection of vintage penny arcade games. The Musee Mechanique moved to Fisherman’s Wharf in 2002, but the camera obscura lives on at Ocean Beach.

The little triangle mirror apparatus at the top spins slowly, so you get this really enchanting 360-degree view of the beach, Seal Rocks, and the surroundings. It’s all reflected onto this white dish shaped table in the center of the small, dark room.

Between the camera obscura and the Musee Mechanique, I could get lost for hours. Fresh off the highway from New Mexico, it was some of the coolest stuff I’d ever seen in my life.

When The Good Man and I paid a visit to the Cliff House this weekend, I was so excited to see the camera obscura is still there. It wasn’t open that day, but it’s there. And that makes me happy.

It was added to the National Register of Historic places in 2001, and is now under the conservancy of the National Park Service, so hopefully it will project on for many years.

The camera obscura makes me so nostalgic. I adore it!

That’s me. My purse was under my jacket, so that’s why my jacket tails are sticking out at such an angle. That and the fact that I’m simply a dork of epic proportions.



Photo taken by The Good Man, Copyright Karen Fayeth 2011



Photos Copyright Karen Fayeth 2011, and taken with an iPhone4 using the Hipstamatic and the Camera+ apps.


Obessed by Floors

There’s this hotel in San Francisco that’s technically in the Financial district but really is so close to the Embarcadero you can taste it (not that you’d actually want to taste the Embarcadero. That’s just ew.).

The hotel is the Hyatt Recency and it’s not only a hotel, it’s also a movie star. The Hyatt featured prominently in the Mel Brooks movie High Anxiety and also served as the lobby for the The Towering Inferno.

I am utterly fascinated by this hotel. It’s a quirky place and definitely has this 1970’s vibe. It was opened in 1973 and I’m guessing it was pretty cha-cha for the time.

It’s odd shaped. The huge atrium is profound. The open hallways looking into the atrium do give a bit of vertigo.

But while that’s all fascinating…it’s the floors that get me. I’m literally obsessed with these floors.

Here’s a couple photos. The patterns just kill me! (in a good way)



Photograph by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011



Photograph by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011


I can’t even begin to imagine how long it took to lay all of those tiles in patterns across not only the huge hotel atrium but also on all four buildings of the shopping center next door.

The floors have a seventies vibe, to be sure, but there is something engaging about them too.

I can catch a glimpse of these floors in a movie or old photo and I know exactly where they are.

It’s just another one of those oh-so-uniquely San Francisco things.




Yes, I wrote a whole blog post about floors.



Photographs by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right corner of this blog. Photos takes with an iPhone4 (I haven’t set up the new phone yet) and using the Camera+ and Hipstamatic apps.


Bonus Post: The Runners Up

(I futzed with the time on this post so it would appear after the one above)


The other items I’m obsessed about at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.


The capsule elevators in the atrium:



Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011




The cascading wall of twinkle lights over the lounge:



Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011




Photos by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right column of this page. Taken with an iPhone4 and the Camera+ app.


Quality Control

You might recall a few months back (July, actually) I posted a story about San Francisco’s celebration for a glass.

A perfect, petite glass, just ripe to be filled to the rim with Irish coffee.

This past weekend, The Good Man and I had much to celebrate, so we spent the weekend rabble rousing from one end of the beautiful City of San Francisco to the other.

It was a magical weekend.

After consuming an insane amount of food at Tadich Grill, a venerable old place dating back to 1849, we set out on the quite stormy Saturday night and ultimately found ourselves at the Buena Vista down on the Wharf.

The Buena Vista is one of my most favorite places in the City. Especially on a cold, rainy night.

I was there in an official capacity, of course. It was necessary to investigate this whole glass issue for myself.

You know, in the interest of quality control and all that.


After the first Irish Coffee, I was intrigued.




After the second Irish Coffee, I was quite contemplative.




After the third Irish Coffee, I was…wait…what were we talking about…..?




*hic* Yes, I found the glasses at the BV to be of fine quality and most upstanding in their capacity to serve a nice warm beverage.

Or something.

I slept rather well that night, too……




All photographs Copyright Karen Fayeth, 2011, and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the right column of this page.

Photos taken with my iPhone4 and the Hipstamatic app.


A Face From The Past

While visiting L.A. this weekend, we had a chance to pile into a convertible and take a drive up and over the hill to Burbank.

It was there I ran into a childhood friend.

A face I can never forget.





Last time I saw this creepy somnabitch he was in Albuquerque, standing on the corner of San Mateo and Montgomery, right across the street from Del Norte High School.

He showed up once or twice in the high school parking lot, too. Looking an awful lot like this:





In fact, over the years he hasn’t changed a bit.

Ok, sure, that hairdo is wildly outdated. Those shifty eyes make me nervous. And those plaid pants! Ugh!

But he still cooks up a real fine breakfast.







Photos from the Burbank Bob’s Big Boy, originally opened in 1949. All photos by Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license displayed on the right column of this page.