Glorious Gate, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Sometimes things come together and the view out the Golden Gate is glorious. All you have to do is stand there and press the shutter release.

[180mm in 35mm terms, 1/800 of a second at f/11 and ISO 200, handheld.]

Into the Sunset, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

These four photos are from my 2005 archives. It turns out the winter of 2005 was specially good for sunsets in the San Francisco Bay area.

Each photo is a sunset view of the Golden Gate from across the San Francisco Bay. They’re all arguments for carefully archiving all of one’s photos, even if the photo isn’t processed right away.

Each of these images is a candidate for inclusion in my Golden Gate book. Let me know which one you like (or if you like more than one).

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Beauty and the Bay, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Treasure Island juts out into San Francisco Bay. Often windy, this forlorn ex-military base has now been partially converted to housing projects. The housing stock is seedy and decaying.

The shoreline of Treasure Island, where I took these photos, is one of the easiest straight shots of the Golden Gate. The only hazard or danger is the merge back onto the Bay Bridge at Yerba Buena Island when you head home. Particularly in the Oakland direction, the merge is a true adrenaline rush.

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Point Bonita Lighthouse, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I’ve been photographing the Golden Gate for years now (quite literally) for a book project at all seasons, in different weather, and from as many good locations as I can find. I can’t believe it, the project is coming to an end. The book is at the point of design, and I have a pool of more photos (shown here as a Flickr set) than I can possibly use. Still, this is the use it or lose it moment. So I’ve been going back through my archives, and post-processing worthy photo candidates.

The Point Bonita Lighthouse guards the southern side of the entrance to the Golden Gate, so I guess this photo counts as a possibility. I took the photo last month in clear sunset weather. (Here’s more of the story.)

Help me decide which photos to include in my book! If you have any favorites from my collection of Golden Gate photos that should definitely be in my book, or if you particularly despise one of my Golden Gate photos, please drop me a line and tell me.

Golden Gate Alignment, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

On a balmy afternoon in late October I studied the topographic map of the USGS San Francisco North Quadrant. This map shows (among other areas) the hills above Fort Baker outside Sausalito, and the northern side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It seemed to me that there was a ridge that could be climbed going up from above Fort Baker. You can tell on a topo map if something is steep when the contour lines on either side of the white space representing the ridge top are spaced close together. If the contour lines aren’t drawn too closely across the top itself, there’s a good chance you can get up.

My hope was to find a location across from the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge so that I could shoot through both towers.

I picked up my friend Mark and we parked on Wolf Back Ridge Road, high above Sausalito. Technically, this is a private, no-trespassing area carved into the Marin Headlands section of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

We donned our hiking boots and backpacks, and scrambled down a steep hill to find the Coastal Trail. Heading south, we passed a high tension tower, and then trudged up the hill over the Waldo tunnel. From there, I could see a straight shot down the ridge I had observed on the topo quadrant map.

The ridge line ended on a rock platform. Yes, the towers of the bridge aligned perfectly from north to south. The setting sun lit the bridge from the west, and the waxing moon provided fill lighting from the other side.

I positioned my camera on the tripod, braced it with my camera backpack to keep it from vibrating in the wind, and exposed for thirty seconds. The time exposure turned the car headlights and tail lights into lines of light beneath the bridge in alignment.

[230mm in 35mm terms, 30 seconds at f/20 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]