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Friday Slide Show: Small Wonders Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

30 June 2017

Probably the less said about these seven images, the better. But when has that ever stopped us?

The original Craigslist.com was housed just across the street on Ninth Ave. in San Francisco from this little shop of pins, patches and "collectibles." Small wonders, in other words.

The name of the place is Oriental Art Gallery and there's no link (OK, there's a Facebook page) because, well, how could you build a Web site for millions of one-of-a-kind things? The holdings in this tiny place no doubt far exceed all of Amazon's offerings.

And they're quite affordable. Just a few bucks. San Francisco values, we think they're called.

That's the sign of a business that's been around a while. An owner whose been around a while, that is. And Su Lee has been in business since 1967, which is about the time she came to San Francisco from Mozambique.

If the Croc band had been audible, we might have taken a seat on the sidewalk to hear the Cool Kats and the Elks Club pianist.

Inside the Oriental Art Gallery, Su Lee's Tchotchke Empire by Stephen Jackson tells the story. The hours, if you're planning to go (and who isn't?), are 1 to 6 p.m. seven days a week. Which is a pity. It should be open until midnight. Or 1 to 6 a.m.

We found ourselves there one morning and, as always, couldn't help but peek at the window display. It hasn't changed in decades. Probably. But we always see something new there.

This time we had our camera, so we snapped a few product shots, so to speak.

It was hard to stop. If the Croc band had been audible, we might have taken a seat on the sidewalk to hear the Cool Kats and the Elks Club pianist. (You'll see what we mean.)

The subjects were small but they were at different heights. The ones on higher shelves suffered from the bright light reflected off the buildings across the street. The lower ones were fortunately in our shadow.

We angled our shot as best we could, in one case using the reflection as a stage backdrop.

And there's a bit of clutter, shall we say. It's thematic but distracting.

That problem we took care of in post processing applying a pretty dark vignette to each image, almost as if they were spotlit.

Great fun, both shooting and in post. And if you can't have fun, you might as join that girl on the bench.


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