Tag Archives: galleries

Legion of Honor

Perched up on a hill overlooking the entrance to the Golden Gate sits the Legion of Honor.  This is an art gallery that, while including quite a variety of art styles, is synonymous with the sculpture of Rodin.  I first visited in 1990 during my first trip to the west coast.  I hadn’t been back since and Nancy had never been.  She is a fan of some of the impressionist painters so I thought this might be a good day out for her.  What I hadn’t realized was that they had a special exhibit on of Monet’s early years.  Turns out it was a bit more appropriate than I realized.

It was a lovely day to be in the city.  The sun was out and the temperatures were on the low 70s.  We had started out early to try and get there before it got busy.  We hadn’t anticipated the exhibit though.  Consequently, it was already quite busy when we got there.  It only got busier so we still were getting the better side of things.  We went straight to the exhibit and spent a fair bit of time in there.  Afterwards, we strolled through the galleries of the collection.

The different galleries are very nicely laid out.  Nothing felt too crowded and the light in the rooms was very nice.  Each gallery had a different style of decoration so you felt the change as you moved from room to room.  Natural light through the roof made it feel a lot less oppressive than some museums.  They did have some sections set up as rooms from old houses and these were a lot more subdued.

The sculpture section was very interesting.  The Spreckels family started the collection and they were avid supporters of Rodin’s work.  The Thinker sits in the forecourt while there are two rooms of his work.  These included bronzes, plaster and marble sculptures.  Rodin liked marble apparently but I find the bronze castings to be the most impressive since they show the texture of the work in a way that is lost a little with marble for me.

When I visit art museums, I find I have a limit of how long I can last.  When we were in Florence, I discovered just how many Madonna and Child pictures I can look at before I am done.  This museum is actually well sized for me.  I was able to check out the whole collection in about the time it takes me to be maxed out.  I didn’t reach the point of either my feet hurting, my back aching or just not wanting to look at another picture.  About the perfect size.  The collection is not as diverse as you will find in some big cities but it works well for a day out.  Check it out if you have the time.

Airliners versus Jetphotos

I bounce backwards and forwards about whether I am interested in the two most prevalent of the online aircraft photograph databases, Airliners.Net and Jetphotos.Net.  I have pictures on both services and they have (very) occasionally brought some useful contacts my way.  Getting images on to their databases can be a frustrating process if you let it since they have very specific requirements about what they accept and what they want.

They own their websites and they can have what they want on there.  If I don’t like it, I am sure they won’t be losing sleep and recognizing this a while back made my life a lot less stressful!  Indeed, I stopped uploading to Airliners.Net and focused on Jetphotos for a while.  They became similar in their issues over time and I stopped bothering altogether.  It hadn’t done much for me so I didn’t see the need.

Every once in a while, I thought it might be useful to have something further there based on the occasional contacts I got.  Therefore, I would get back into the idea of creating edits of my images for the websites.  However, I now make the edits, submit the shots and, if they are accepted, fine.  If not, fine a well.  I am not chasing database statistics with these people.

I have recently come across a few shots of mine that I thought might be good for the sites so made the edits and uploaded to each site.  This was one of those moments when I wanted to compare them in their acceptance policy.  They have a desire for a high level of sharpening but don’t like things to be over-sharpened.  They also can have different views as to what over-processing is – something I like since they often reject for that when I have done very little processing at all!

I have now got the results back and it continues to amuse.  Both sites have accepted some and rejected others.  The fun comes from the fact that they have taken very different approaches to their analysis.  Airliners have rejected some things that were accepted by Jetphotos.  Similarly Jetphotos have rejected some that Airliners accepted.  Rejections were often for similar reasons but for different images.  Is there any rhyme or reason?  I don’t know.  I used to appeal shots that I thought they had been incorrect on.  Now I don’t bother.  Will this ever change?  Probably not.  Will I change my approach?  Probably not.  Does it matter?  Probably not.  The most important thing is to not get stressed about this stuff I guess.