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Silicon Valley Stock Photos- Local Tourism

Aside from chasing autonomous cars, I covered a little other Silicon Valley local tourism.

Plaza de Cesar Chavez in downtown San Jose was nice and tidy. And with those colorful chairs out I thought it a good opportunity to shoot some stock.

And I wandered over to the San Jose Museum of Art too.

And took a look at what changes have come to the Googleplex. Guess the latest android operating system is “Oreo”.

Then I headed to the “Android Graveyard” (I think Google calls it the Android Sculpture Garden, but whatever….)

And I had a handy Google Now reminder I setup to pull out my Android toys whenever I’m at the Googleplex. And it worked! I broke out my Android toy and set him next to his larger brother (or sister? our Green Robot is quite androgynous.)

I almost forgot- I also visited Shoreline Park in Mountain View. There’s also the Rengsdorf House from back in the day when Mountain View was rural.

Setting my sites on home, I thought it might be a good time to revisit Youtube HQ in San Bruno.

There was a lot of security out front. There had been a shooting at the site a few weeks earlier. One of the security guards was a total d!ck telling me I couldn’t photograph from the sidewalk, then giving me sh!t when I told him I could. Another lady followed me and aggressively asked why I was photographing the building. Argh!

Yahoo!, Youtube, Cruise Automation and the Golden Gate Bridge

Finally! I had a day to run around and shoot some stock.

Yahoo offices in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley

I chose to head down to Sunnyvale to visit the Yahoo HQ. Not that too much has changed, but I wanted an excuse to visit Weird Stuff Warehouse. Plus I wanted to do a little recon to see if there was any activity over at the Baidu and Renault/Nissan research centers. The only real difference notable at the Yahoo building was the flag up with “Oath, a Verizon Company” on it. BTW, weird name for a company…but whatever.

Now, on to San Bruno to YouTube HQ…. once again this was on my list to flesh out my stock photo archive of tech companies. Note to self, return in the morning when the light on the front will be better.

Next stop was Cruise Automation in San Francisco. They’re GM’s self driving car research center. It’s funny- they try to make this a secret- the building is still labelled “Borden Decal Co.” But it’s hard to miss the Chevy Bolt EVs coming and going every few minutes with the funky Lidar antennae.

Self Driving Car Testing on the Streets of San Francisco

And once I got more boring autonomous car testing pics, I headed to Crissy Field hoping to get some nice Golden Gate Bridge photos. I’ve posted a few here, but I did also shoot some medium format film too. Those won’t be ready for a while if they do turn out well.

The Real Streets of Silicon Valley

After dozens of trips chasing the various self driving car projects in Silicon Valley- it’s funny what I really find interesting. This time I staked out ~~Google, Alphabet, Google X~~, Waymo’s self driving car project. I found not much going on. Sitting in various locations around the campus, I saw maybe 4-5 Self Driving Fiat-Chrysler minivans in an hour.

Waymo's Autonomous Chrysler minivan on the Streets of Silicon Valley

So I moved on to Sunnyvale. There are a couple of car research locations, and two are right across the street from one another: Baidu-Nissan/Renault. Nothing new to see there. In fact the Baidu self driving cars parking spots where I saw them last time were taken by plain old regular cars.

RV on the Streets of Silicon Valley

So I opted to see if there was anything going on with the troubled Yahoo! HQ just two blocks away. And in that short distance between billion dollar companies gleaming Silicon Valley presences, there were some surprises.

Crosley on the Streets of Silicon Valley

There were beat-up RVs lining part of the road. In between them, was a rusty, itsy bitsy super cute little car. It might have been a similar size to Waymo’s Firefly “pod-car”. But reading between the rust was the name Crosley. The plate was rusty, from Oklahoma expired in 1962.

Funny how a car-make that was only a footnote in history can be more interesting than the robotic cars the fill news-cycles. I wonder how long until self driving cars are found rusty and derelict on the side of the roads?

A Belated May Roundup…..

I’ve been trying to dump all relevant stock photos from a month of stock shootin’ on the web. A while back Godaddy- one of my hosts, changed some settings screwing up my “imagefarm” that I setup a couple years back.

But alas, I finally found the setting and fixed it.

So here’s a Lightroom Web Gallery for last May:

Tesla Testing

Intel Museum

A Bitcoin ATM

Knightscope Robots

Hacker Dojo

Nvidia

That Android Graveyard again

Mercedes-Daimler Silicon Valley Research

GM- Cruise Automation

Legion of Honor

~~Google~~ ~~Alphabet~~ Waymo Chrysler minivan in the wild

Intel’s “Garage” in Silicon Valley

http://imagefarm.siliconvalleystock.com/imagefarm/2017/2017_May_Roundup/index_15.html

Android is Broken

Going back in the archives, sometimes I find a photo I especially like. This photo of the Google Android Robot statue was taken back in 2012. Back then the statues were in a spot that was especially bad. They were almost constantly backlit, and constantly muddy ground despite the long drought in California.

Android Robot Statue at the Googleplex roped off with Caution Tape

I’m not sure why the Droid is surrounded by cones and caution tape. Maybe they just did a paint touch up?

In any case a couple years later they moved all the old statues to a new location (I was fortunate enough to have caught while still in preparation) that I refer to as the “Android Graveyard.”

Now the new mascot (presently Nougat) is at the entrance to the main building at the Googleplex. The old one is “buried” at the “Android Graveyard” a block or so away.

The new location for all previous Android Mascot Sculptures under renovation

Tearsheet: CityWire

I’ve been busy doing reverse image searches and here are a few resulting tearsheets. This one is from CityWire by Peter Smith.

CityWire Blog: Advice profession requires robotic regulation

Around the Googleplex — Self Driving Car licensed via Alamy

Cruise Automation Autos

After doing some homework, I found GM’s Cruise Automation garage in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. Two decades ago I worked not too far from the garage at Faulkner Color Lab. I think Faulkner collapsed in the first wave of the Dot Com hysteria of the late 1990’s and was leased to a pet food website.

Cruise Automation Self Driving Car (Chevy Bolt) Spotted on the Streets of San Francisco

In fact it was in this very neighborhood that I first experienced the graphical internet in the mid 1990’s at Icon Byte Bar and Grill. Prior to seeing the new W3 (World Wide Web) on Icon’s projection screen I got email on a command line browser over the phone line with a modem and a program called Pine, downloaded files with Gopher and Telnet. That was a long time ago!

Now SOMA is again at the forefront of technology. Here you can see GM’s Cruise Automation Bolts driving by. As is typical with these garages, they make a point of laying low. At least as best they can when trying to test out a billion dollar car research project in the middle of San Francisco! The garage still has the name of the previous company over the entrance.

As a photographer, I know I’m doing something good when the corporate lawyer walks across the street to talk to you 😉 A gentleman (after later researching I believe to be Matt Gipple,) asked if I minded letting him know what I was photographing. This happens a lot to me, and I really find it strange…. like you are in public, driving a car that is in dozens of news stories every day for a multi-billion dollar company working on a billion dollar project….. why wouldn’t you expect people photographing you???

In any case, here are the photos. I’ll be back to try and get some variety of locations and include the actual garage and any other relevant photos next time.

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Robots and Robotic Cars

Yesterday I hit the jackpot doing the Silicon Valley paparazzi thing. First off, I visited Intel’s “Garage” for their self driving car project. I read there was a media event there the day before. When I arrived it looked like the event was still in swing. Delphi’s self driving Audi was being demonstrated and another white vehicle with the give away Lidar setup on the roof was visible in the distance. Walking up the rather terse security guard asked if I had a badge. “No” – well than you can’t come in!

But alas, I had my new Sigma 150-600mm contemporary I purchased with this sort of thing in mind. Fortunately, Delphi’s “Intel Inside” Audi Q5s is plastered with logos of the various suppliers to the project, Intel, MobilEye, Vehicle 2 Everything, Ottomatika, and a big “Self-Driving Vehicle” notice on the back. Why that’s fortunate, is that unlike most other Self driving cars I’ve stalked, Delphi’s doesn’t have the big Lidar bucket atop. Instead, If you look closely at the full resolution photos, you can see cameras and sensors all over. Not only the more obvious ones in the rear view mirror assembly, but also in various subtle spots I would likely miss walking past this vehicle under normal circumstances.

Waymo’s Autonomous Chrysler minivan on the Streets of Silicon Valley

After my parking spot expired, I moved on to Google in search of the ever illusive new Waymo Chrysler self driving minivan. And this time I found them! In fact, the new Pacifica minivans were so common- it’s my guess that was the reason I didn’t see a single one of those super-cute “pod cars”, perhaps all the “drivers” are busy testing the Chryslers?

And last but not least, I stumbled upon the robot security guard at Microsoft’s Mountain View Campus.

Autonomous Campus Patrol, Microsoft Campus, Silicon Valley

The Knightscope robot is a bit overly cute, it even has a soundtrack with a futuristic sound.

Greetings from Silicon Valley!

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The Death of Marshmallow

Google, Mountain View, California (Michael Halberstadt)

A while ago I wrote a little piece about the new “Android Graveyard.” Google had a sculpture garden in front of a more prominent building on the Googleplex. They moved all their sculptures (I caught them in pieces getting touch up job in the last post.) Now they are in an out-of-the way corner in a peripheral building near the Google-central.

Google Android Statue Garden, Mountain View, Silicon Valley (Editorial Use Only) (Michael Halberstadt / SiliconValleyStock.com)

What Google started doing was unveiling a new sculpture with each OS release. Android operating system releases are named after sweets. Now with the birth of a new OS, there’s a death and a sculpture is added to the Android Graveyard.

This time came was the the birth of Nougat, and the death of Marshmallow.

A new statue at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, depicts Android 4.4 nicknamed KitKat with an Android Statue made of KitKat bars (Michael Halberstadt) — A new statue at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, depicts Android 4.4 nicknamed KitKat with an Android Statue made of KitKat bars (Michael Halberstadt)

Here are a few stock photos of a Silicon Valley graveyard.

The new location for all previous Android Mascot Sculptures under renovation (Michael Halberstadt)

Announcing Android Nougat

Google just announced the new Android OS: it’s Nougat. Sweet.

As per usual, the new sculpture was released at the Googleplex. Yours truly put on my editorial stock photographer hat and made a stop in Mountain View yesterday.

I also got a few stock photographs of the Android sculpture garden that has changed a bit since my last visit. It was also mobbed with kids and other visitors. Finally there’s a place to go to for some Silicon Valley tourism besides the small infrastructure that barely exists here.