Stock Photography of Silicon Valley & Beyond
At least I had one pole- this is a somewhat unique view of Santa Clara’s Civic Center Park and Fountain. With the drought over, there’s water in the fountain unlike last time I came here. While I came here with a pole (mono-polar?) There was a guy in the corner of the park shouting insults at me as I photographed. I was a bit worried but he never came too close. Eventually another vagrant came buy and the had a shouting match beneath the gaze of Saint Claire and my new Sony A6500.
Winter break for Guess Where Silicon Valley has ended. Here’s March’s entry- can you guess where/what this photo is of?
It’s historic, it’s multikulti, it’s in San Jose…..
The first correct answer will receive a all expenses paid trip to nowhere and my eternal gratitude.
As I was driving around the Streets of Silicon Valley- I stumbled upon yet another in the many contenders for self driving cars. This is a Chinese company with a presence in Cupertino called Roadstar.ai.
Finally! I had a day to run around and shoot some stock.
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.
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.
Ok, we got the Streets of Silicon Valley covered (I even bought a domain with that name and have a separate blog there.) Then there’s the robot security guards in the parking lots. Well right around the corner from my house out on the sidewalks I’ve also met my robotic overlords.
There’s an outfit called BoxBot testing a delivery robot. They don’t look too far along as far as autonomous-ness, there seems to be a human with a joy stick walking behind the orange small refrigerator on its back looking contraption.
None-the-less it’s fun to see a little of this autonomousness so close to home. Maybe I’ll place an order and see how it works?
Where is this statue? Hint, it’s in a theater in the East Bay.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oops, I ran a little late setting up November’s “Guess Where Silicon Valley”. But alas, here it is. Where can you find a bamboo forest in Silicon Valley? And not just any bamboo forest, this is a testing ground for a variety of bamboo types.
Remember, as always the stakes are high. Winners may win my long lasting gratitude in addition to the pride of just being a geo-quiz winner.
Much of our water comes from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir near Yosemite. There are two “Water Temples” celebrating the arrival of our most precious substance at the termini in the Bay Area – this is the westernmost terminus. Where are we?
Back in the 1970’s this suburban Silicon Valley house witnessed the beginning of what would become one of the world’s most successful corporations. Can you guess what it is and where?
