Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Morning, San Francisco Bay

July 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog covers Oakland and the East Bay Hills as hazy sun illuminates sailboats and ships on San Francisco Bay beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.

This photograph was made from high in the Marin Headlands, after hiking up to the hill above Battery 129 near the high point on Conzelman Road, the scenic route that climbs this ridge above the Golden Gate. I had earlier shot a similar scene from a spot just a bit lower, but by now the morning fog and haze was clearing enough to allow a bit more sun to light up the waters of the Bay and to reveal a subtle blue color. (Later the blue would be much deeper, and earlier it had been nearly gray.) This particular shade of blue is one of the things I liked about this scene on this particular day.

The hill at lower left is part of the Marin Headlands and drops from the road almost straight down to the water. The small bit of land intruding into the frame on the left just above the wake of a boat is Alcatraz Island. Beyond that is Treasure Island and its companion, Yerba Buena Island. The latter is crossed by the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, leading to Oakland which is just barely visible under the fog over the East Bay hills. Near the upper right is a tiny bit of one of the piers along the San Francisco waterfront.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Commentary, Site News

RSS Problems – Better But Not Fully Resolved?

July 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 9 Comments

I wrote yesterday about a couple of technical issues that arose when I switched to this new theme a few weeks ago. I’m certain that I have now solved the problem that left photographs out of search results when using the search box on this site. I’m still getting some reports from people who don’t see the photographs in the daily posts of new images. (They may see the affiliate link image.)

I’m still working to get to the bottom of this. It seems like those who encounter this problem may be seeing the so-called “summary” of the posts rather than the full post. This perplexes me since I just double-checked and I have selected the option to send the full post content in the feed. In addition, I see the full content in my Google Reader versions of the feed.

However… there are two other places where I’m also seeing a version that does not include the images.

The first is when I check via the RSS feature in my Apple OS X Mail program. (I don’t normally use this, but I used it as a test case earlier today.)
The second is in the “Networked Blogs” posts that let the blog automatically post into my Facebook account. To be honest, I’ve seen others having problems with the Networked Blogs service, and I’ve been considering eliminating it.

If you follow the RSS feed, it would be useful if you could take a moment to let me know whether or not you see the images in posts. You can simply reply to this message here at the blog or at Facebook if you see it there.

(For those who wonder if I perhaps decided to keep my photographs out of the feeds for any number of reasons… that isn’t the case. This is entirely a technical issue and not one that I intended.)

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Rusted Gate and Concrete Wall, Battery 129

July 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rusted gate against a weathered concrete wall at the entrance to a tunnel at Battery 129, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

At the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, Conzelman Road leads up into the Marin Headlands along the San Francisco Bay side of the ridge. This road is a favorite place for overlooking the Golden Gate and its famous bridge along with a large expanse of San Francisco and its Bay and points east. In mid-July the road was not accessible from the usual spot near the end of the bridge, so I detoured around towards the “back entrance” via the road to Rodeo Beach. From this road I turned up into the hills and joined Conzelman near its summit. I made a few foggy photographs of the Bay, but my main interest was in trying to find photographs in the old batteries and other abandoned military facilities along the ridge running out toward Point Bonita.

At the summit of the hill, before the road becomes very narrow and many people turn back, is “Battery 129.” There are several tunnels into this facility from alongside the road and a separate route leads up the hill to the old structures on the summit. I took one of the two tunnels under the hill and as I entered the second section I saw this old metal gate against a weathered concrete wall, illuminated by light leaking in from the end of the tunnel.

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Commentary, Community, Site News

Format Problem with Blog Search and RSS Solved?

July 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Earlier today I posted:

A week ago, after having recently updated the theme for this blog, I became aware that search results returned by the blog do not include images. That is a problem on a photography web site! Earlier today, several people emailed to point out that the images have also disappeared from the RSS feed for the site.

The loss of images in search and RSS was certainly not intentional! I’m going to try to figure out why this has happened and correct it as soon as I can. (“Thank you” to readers who alerted me to this!)

I have a bit of an update, and I also have a quick request if you have a moment…

One problem was that images were not showing up when visitors searched to site using the search box that appears near the top of the sidebar on each page. Only text was being returned in the search results. I believe that I have fixed this problem – my own searches now include images incorporated in the original post. That is pretty darned important on a photography blog!

The other problem was that several readers who subscribe to posts via the RSS feed reported no longer seeing images in the feed. This has proven a bit more complex. I checked my Google Reader feeds, where I had been monitoring two versions of this blog’s feed. I discovered that the photographers were, indeed, missing from one version of the feed. I cancelled both feeds and resubscribed and… now they both work correctly. I also checked the php files for the RSS page and it looks like it should include the entire posts, images and all.

So, if you have encountered a problem with images disappearing from the RSS feed recently, I would like to suggest the following:

Try to unsubscribe from the feed in your feed reader. The subscribe again, as if you were doing it for the first time.
If you do this and the images are still not visible in posts that follow your completion of this step, I would be grateful if you would let me know a bit more about how your subscribe.
You might also consider using Google Reader as your RSS feed reader. That is what I now use, and I’m pleased with the interface… and the images seem to show up correctly there.

Thanks!

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.