Walking the Line, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

On a harbor bridge, I photographed the Moss Landing power plant. As I packed up to call it a night, I turned around and noticed the pattern of lights on the bridge—and the apparent line, mostly formed of shadow, dividing the sidewalk from the road.

I stopped down for good depth of field so the foreground and background would both be in focus.

Exposure data: 50mm, 20 seconds at f/20 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.

Moss Landing, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Whatever possessed “them” to “uglify” (to borrow a word from C.S.Lewis) this beautiful, working fishing harbor on Monterey Bay with a massive natural gas fired power plant? Bad move, guys. That said, it does light up the night most attractively!

Cannery Row, photo by Harold Davis.View this image larger.

The night holds many secrets. If you’ve been to the wonderous Monterey Aquarium, you’ll know Cannery Row as an example of a tourist McMalled Bif from a Back to the Future distopia. The building shown foreground in this photo is a ritzy hotel on Cannery Row.

I hate seeing people homeless, especially when surrounded by such affluence. But there is a certain delicious irony in the men hunkered down in the shadows under the hotel. In Steinbeck’s day, they would have been called “hobos”—and Cannery Row has built a tourist trap on the basis of nostalgia for that seediness. Things seem to have come full circle.

Stair Lighting, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Last night Joseph and I visited Sutro Baths for a shoot in the fog. This is the stairs going back up to the parking lot. Joseph held the light and I made a series of 30 second exposures. The fog combined with mercury vapor flood lighting to make the orange glow in the background.

Joseph’s idea was to create an image of a stairway to hell, which as an idea contrasts nicely with my recently blogged Stairway to Heaven, but should probably be going down rather than up, and likely would require physical model making or virtual compositing. A couple of my impossible images such as Calling Alice or Endless Stair might come close. (Check out my Impossible set on Flickr.)

My own, rather more modest, goal was to use the fog, night lighting, and shadows in an interesting composition.