San Francisco, July 2014

San Francisco2

Continuing to catch up on imagery from earlier in the year…  Even though the ISER meetings occupied most of our time in San Francisco, we did manage to get out a couple of the days and pack quite a bit in.

 

Velella velella

David, Barb, Ning and I managed to get out to the shore and then into the Castro district for some coffee.  I’d not actually made it out to the beach just South of San Francisco before, but found it to be an amazing place.  While we were there, the beach was littered with gorgeous Velella which are always neat to see.  The cool thing was to see if we could find “right handed” vs. “left handed” Velella which we were able to see a couple left handed specimens.

 

Barb and BWJones

David Barb and Ning

David Krizaj

Ning in car

Shore

Dolphin2

Dolphins-off-San-Francisco

There were also huge pods of bottlenose dolphins that were moving North up the beach.  The shark we saw moving South into the direction of the pod of dolphins may have had a rude shock.

 

Bay Bridge

Downtown SF

Perspective

San Francisco ship

Seagull

SF View

Wall o building

SF-Timelapse2

The San Francisco Hyatt down at the Embarcadero center that was hosting the conference was a pretty nice location with good access to the Ferry Building with amazing food options.  Pretty good views from the top and even the rooms.  I could have simply sat all day on the balcony and watched the boat/ship traffic in the Bay.

 

Assorted Beans

Fruit

Ramps and mushrooms

If we had a place with a stove, all of the food options down at the Ferry Building would have made for some fine eating.  Not only do they have restaurants, but they also have food vendors selling all sorts of items from amazing looking mushrooms to vegetables, fruits, seafood and meats.  Perhaps the best option the next time is an Air B&B apartment?

 

Humphy Slocombe Breakfast Surprise

Special shout out to Humphry Slocombe for the “Secret Breakfast” ice cream.  Holy smokes! Bourbon ice cream with Corn Flakes in it.  Amazing stuff.

 

Fliesler at dinner2

Michael Mina

Dinner with Robert, Ann and Steve was also had at Michael Mina, an amazing experience.  Thank you Robert.

 

Aquarium

Big fish

Lionfish

SF Aquarium

SF Aquarium2

Skulls

Skulls3

We managed to run over to the California Academy of Sciences after one of the sessions, but we only had an hour before they closed.  What we could manage to see in the hour of running around was amazing.  If you have the time when in San Francisco, I highly recommend spending some time there.

 

Chinatown Alleyway Umbrella

Chinatown Alleyway

Low light BWJones

Night alley

San Francisco alley at night

Sleeping on the street

Sleeping on the street2

Tenderloin at night

Walking around cities at night is an amazing way to get a feeling for the city.  When I worked in restaurants, this was the only time I could get out after work.  And unfortunately, when attending scientific meetings that go from the early morning to late evenings, seeing cities at night is the only way to get out.  Its also a completely different perspective for photography.

 

Google bird

Ann Torrence at Google

Robert at Google

Google bike

Before we left the Bay Area, Robert, Ann and I also went over to Google to give a talk on connectomics.  Thanks to my friend Parisa Tabriz who hosted us.  It was also good to see Aaron D’Souza.  I’d not seen these guys in person since our Cuba trip.  Was good to see you guys.  Lets set up another trip!

 

Robert Marc

Ann Torrence

Thanks Robert and Ann for the company.  Its always fun traveling with you.

 

 

San Francisco Bay

Thank you San Francisco.  You are a great city.  See you next time.

2 Replies to “San Francisco, July 2014”

  1. A nice group of pictures as always including some nice low light photos. I haven’t commented for a while but I have been enjoying your posts.

    I had a question and a comment. My question is about all the skulls that were in a couple of the photographs. Am I correct in assuming that they are sea lion skulls?

    I also wanted to mention the 2014 Bioscapes Photo Competition winners gallery if you haven’t already seen it. I will try to paste a link for you. The entries that caught my attention were the ninth place and tenth place winners. The ninth place showed the trochanteral gears of a planthopper. I am amazed at the resemblance to gears in machines. The tenth place winner is a video of the neural activity in a zebra fish brain. The video took a little while to load on my computer so you may have to be a little patient while it loads.

    http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/gallery/year/2014

    Thanks for all the interesting pictures.

    Bill

    1. Thanks Bill. Yeah, we are familiar with the Bioscopies competition. Its something we’ve looked at a couple times, but have looked at other competitions first. More news on that in the next couple months…

      As to all the skulls, yeah, most of them are sea lion skulls, but there were a few skulls from other species thrown in to show some examples of convergent evolution.

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