first:

to those of you who have sent e-mail to me, or might send e-mail: i love to hear the stories, get the feedback and learn about new places to shoot. however, this site generates too much e-mail for me to write back to everyone... in the past i have tried to, but i am so far behind on e-mail now... and i don't see any leisure time in the future to catch up. i'm sorry for this, and i still welcome your comments, but i can no longer respond directly to all the mail. many thanks to all of you who write in...

my name is emilie. i am a photographer (and webmaster). i started this site in december of 1995. every week i shot somewhere in san francisco and then posted selected images on fridays. i focused on places that i love. so yeah, it's been subjective, but that's more interesting, right? starting in september of 1997 i moved to new york city for a year and continued the project there. in april of 1998 i had to change the weekly postings to monthly postings, but you can still count on a new installation the first of every month. then, as planned, in september of 1998 i returned to san francisco... and so has this project, with a few additions.

tech

for this site i work almost exclusively in black and white (this may change to include color... it's the nyc influence). i shoot, process and digitize the b&w images myself (color i shoot and digitize). every now and then i may opt to shoot in color chrome, and then convert to black and white when i digitize them, but i promise that i won't alter the images in any other way (except traditional dark room techniques like contrast, exposure, etc...). all images will appear as gifs on the first page (i will try to keep them small!) and sometimes i'll link them to a larger jpeg file.

why bother?

i have been shooting in this documentary style for years, including a long-term project documenting life in san francisco. bringing this project to the web was an attempt to share with others, on a greater scale, the city i see and love.

copyright

all images are copyright emilie valentine
and should not be reproduced without permission.