Wave Toss, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I was on Baker Beach to photograph the Golden Gate as night fell. My plan was to wait until it was pretty dark and the lights of the bridge came on. Then I was going to open the shutter wide for a good long time exposure, let the white of the waves form a ghostly solid, and digitally turn night to day. In some cases, this turned out like I planned, and I’ll post more images from the series as I process them.

My plan of action turned out to be surprisingly physical. To get the perspective of the bridge I wanted with the rollers in front meant going pretty far down towards the water, planting my tripod, exposing, and the rushing back up the beach before the next wave. I was running down, planting the tripod, getting off the exposure, grabbing my tripod and running back up.

As the light grew dimmer, and the exposures longer, this activity began to seem dubious to the point of being positively unwise. A thirty second exposure gives one (and one’s camera) plenty of time to be drenched by subsequent waves.

In this exposure, I was caught by a wave before the exposure was finished. As the water poured over my shoes and legs I grabbed the tripod mid-exposure, rushed upwards, and planted it on the beach. Somehow both images of the Golden Gate Bridge registered (from where the wave hit, and from where I planted the tripod on dry sand). Along with random camera-toss light lines, the shadow of the beach, and ghosts of the waves.