Photoblog 2.0

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

There was a strong wind blowing at my Angel Island campsite, and my tent puffed in and out like a bellows. But a little after midnight, the wind totally cut out and the surface of San Francisco Bay turned as flat and reflective as a sheet of glass. I grabbed my camera and tripod, put on a polarizer, and got a bunch of exposures before the wind picked up again and the glorious reflections vanished.

Some hours later, emerging from my sleeping bag, I saw the rising sun kissing the top of San Francisco’s towers.

[Above: Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 95mm (142.5mm in 35mm terms), circular polarizer, 30 seconds at f/5.3 and ISO 100, tripod mounted. Below: Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 26mm (39.5mm in 35mm terms), 2/5 of a second at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

View this image larger.

Wright Stairs, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a photo taken looking straight up one of the smaller, back staircases at the Marin Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The results are almost abstract: I don’t think one is quite sure what one is looking at. There’s very little Photoshop work here, just a bit of adjustment to compensate for the mixed-color-temperature light environment.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 15mm (22.5mm in 35mm terms), 10 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Related images: Resistance to Spirals Is Futile, Endless Stair.

Campsite #4, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I spent a night last week camping on Angel Island. Smack dab in the middle of San Francisco Bay, wild in the midst of civilization, I had a great time. You can only reach Angel Island by ferry, and after the last ferry left I had the place pretty much to myself. I climbed Mount Livermore, and then settled down at my camp.

Perched on the southwest corner of the island, I had drop-dead views of Alcatraz, downtown San Francisco, and the Golden Gate. The show started at sunset, and did not stop. More photos will follow.

I took this one a little after midnight. There was a huge old Eucalytus tree stump at my campsite. I exposed for the Golden Gate Bridge, and lit the stump (which was in deep shadows) during the exposure by “painting” with light, using my headlamp.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 18mm (27mm in 35mm terms), 60 seconds at f/5 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Related stories: Alone in the City; Gerbode Valley.

Dome, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is the interior of the dome of San Francisco City Hall. I lay on my back in the central space of the building, letting people flow around me. The wide-angle lens and straight-up point-of view combined to create the illusion of apparent flatness (actually the dome has considerable depth).

Related stories: San Francisco City Hall; After the Wedding.

[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 1.3 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

San Francisco Sunset, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I was able to get away the other day for an hour around sunset. The clouds viewed from Indian Rock were very special. Watching a sunset with serenity without kids leaping all over me like a bunch of puppies is a simple pleasure.

Who knows, had I taken this photo prior to going to press, this might have been one of the 100 Views of the Golden Gate!

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 44mm (66mm in 35mm terms), 1/100 of a second at f/5 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.]

San Francisco City Hall, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

They say you can’t fight City Hall, and in the case of this beautiful neo-classical San Francisco building from the 1930s where so many weddings take place, why would one want to? The main challenge for me with this relatively straight digital photo—or as straight as one can be with a digital fisheye—was to not over do it and get caught up in some baroque Photoshop game. After all, the architecture is quite bombastic all on its own.

[Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, 1/2 of a second at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Solar Bisection, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

One of my favorite spots for observing sunset over Mount Tamalpais and the Golden Gate is a vacant lot on upper Euclid Avenue in the Berkeley Hills. I don’t know the real estate history of this lot, but it seems at this point like a small city park with a fence protecting people from the drop that overlooks the view.

I’ve tried the solar bisection of the tree trunk idea at this spot before. The trick, of course, is a matter of timing: there’s only a split second in any given sunset in which the sun will be in the right position.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens at 42mm (63mm in 35mm terms) with image stabilization engaged, 1/640 of a second at f/13 and ISO 200, hand held.]

Underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

With the top floor deck of Fort Point repaired and open to the public, it’s now possible to worm one’s way out on a fortified tower that sits directly under the Golden Gate Bridge.

On a recent clear, windy, and cold day I explored the place with Julian and Nicky (who have a love of all things fortress and castle).

The underparts of the Golden Gate Bridge span looked like a giant erector set. I used a wide angle lens fully stopped-down for maximum depth of field to get both the “erector set” girders and the distant parts of the bridge in focus.

Related story: X Marks the Spot.

[Nikon D300, 12-24 zoom lens at 14mm (21mm in 35mm terms), 1/25 of a second at f/22, ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Hayward Marsh, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The San Mateo Bridge crosses San Francisco Bay roughly half way between San Francisco and San Jose. Many commuters rushing over the bridge probably don’t know that an interesting wilderness area lies on the northeastern side of the bridge.

Hayward Regional Shoreline consists of 1,713 acres of salt, fresh, and brackish water marshes, seasonal wetlands and public trails. The view here is looking west towards San Francisco Bay with the San Mateo Bridge on the left. Cogswell Marsh, straight ahead, once used solar drying to produce salt. Hayward Marsh, to the right, is partly supplied with fresh water using Hayward municipal treated waste water. In this area there’s a preserve for the endangered Salt Marsh Mouse.

This mouse only lives in a couple of places in the marsh land around San Francisco Bay, with the Hayward Marsh the largest species habitat. It feeds on pickleweed and other saltmarsh plants, and remarkably has developed kidneys that can process the salt water it drinks.

Over the recent four-day weekend, Phyllis and I and the boys went for a hike in the Hayward Marsh. The boys ran ahead to play in the mud flats that border the Bay, and I snapped this photo of the landscape.

[Nikon D300, 18-200 VR Zoom lens at 18mm (27mm in 35mm terms), image stabilization turned off, 1/3 of a second at f/22, ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Winter Sunset, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Yesterday was a beautiful and sunny interlude in the Bay area’s morass of soggy weather. Towards sunset, I grabbed Julian and we headed for Indian Rock. Julian climbed up, over, around, and through the rocks while I set up my tripod and long lens.

The sun was a giant round ball, and I had hopes of duplicating the series of photos that ended up as the cover for 100 Views of the Golden Gate.

It’s amazing how wrong camera light meters get the exposure for the sun. You almost can’t underexpose enough to get an appropriately exposed sun when it’s large in the photo. Using the kind of average exposure setting the camera gives you is likely to lead to an unattractive and dripping soft boiled egg yolk effect.

As a case in point, the camera wanted me to take this exposure at 1/640 of a second and f/10 at ISO 100. My exposure in fact was at 1/2000 of a second at f/20 and ISO 100, letting in something like 1/16 of the light of the suggested setting. (Comparing exposure-value pairs is explained in Chapter 1 of Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers.)

I wouldn’t have minded taking another, even darker, exposure. But I didn’t get the chance. The sun sank behind the cloud bank without ever appearing right behind the bridge as in my earlier series, the clouds covered the sky, and we had rain again today.

Worth noting: the not unattractive noise in the lower left of the image results from lightening up the extremely dark RAW exposure.

[Nikon D300, 240mm (360mm in 35mm terms), 1/2000 of a second at f/20 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Cataract below Mt Tamalpais, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

There was a break today in the rainy weather that has hit the Bay area recently. I thought the waterfalls on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais would be running strongly, so I grabbed Julian and we hiked down to Cataract Falls. It was an adventure-filled journey, with wet crossings, a ranger to help to clear a blocked stream, and logs to clamber over. We had a great time, and it was good to get outside after days of cabin fever.

For this image of Cataract Falls, I bracketed shutter speeds, using a base exposure that was long enough to soften the water, and super-imposing a much shorter exposure that shows some of the frothy detail of the flowing water.

Related image: Cataract Falls in February 2007.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR Zoom lens at 19mm (27mm in 35mm terms), 3/5 of a second at f/22 and 1/40 of a second at f/4.0; both exposures ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Dipsea Trail, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

After several days of savage rain, with violent wind and pelting water that the winter Pacific storms bring, Julian and I set out to photograph Cataract Falls on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. The weather had partially cleared, but was still intermittently drizzling.

When we got to Pantoll Station we found that the Park Service had closed the road to the upper slopes of Mount Tamalpais. So we parked by the Dipsea Trail near Steep Ravine instead. Crossing the bridge towards the bottom of Steep Ravine, Julian and I headed up the moist stone and wood stairs, and into the redwood grove shown in the photo.

Digital photography is the art of combining one’s vision with the possible. What is possible changes with each generation of technology.

My new Nikon D300 has a feature called Active D-Lighting, which the camera manual describes as follows:

Active D-Lighting preserves details in highlights and shadows, creating photos with natural contrast. Use for high contrast scenes, for example when photographing brightly lit outdoor scenery through a door or window or taking pictures of shaded subjects on a sunny day.

Trying to deconstruct this manual-speak, my take was that Active D-Lighting provided the ability in-camera to extend the dynamic range of an image. In other words, Active D-Lighting might provide a jump start on the kind of layering of different RAW exposures that I use for most of my photos.

Overcast but bright skies lit the tops of the trees, the tree trunks themselves were almost hidden in darkness, and a light mist rose from the Dipsea Trail itself. This scene, with a great deal of contrast in dynamic range, seemed perfect for taking Active D-Lighting out for a trial run. I scrolled through the menus, and turned Active D-Lighting on to High.

While I was making my 5 second Active D-Lighting exposure, Julian was fooling around with his camera, moving it during his exposures to create images of ghost trees and people (people meaning me). Perhaps I’ll post one of Julian’s photos later.

I think Active D-Lighting did pretty well with the contrast range in this photo, with much less multiple RAW layer masking than I’m typically used to. But to really get a feel for the setting, I’m going to have to do some tests in a more controlled environment where I can keep good notes about each exposure and exactly what changes I’m making (this setting doesn’t appear in the EXIF data, so I’m on my own for keeping track of whether Active D-Lighting was on, and how it was set).

Related images: Yosemite Valley Forest Floor; Big Sticks.

[12-14mm zoom lens at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms), 5 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Crepuscular Shadow, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a photo from my files. I took it in November, 2005 from a sailboat below the Golden Gate Bridge. The image shows a shadow of the bridge projected on the clouds (sometimes called a “crepuscular” shadow).

Related story: Bridge Shadow.

Almost Night, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a thirty second, lens-wide-open photo of the Golden Gate with night fast approaching, taken on New Years Eve, 2007 from upper Panormic in the Berkeley-Oakland hills.

Winter nights in the Bay area can be marvelously clear, even when (as in this photo) fog is rising off the water. In this photo, you can clearly see the silhouette of the Farallon Islands behind the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the warning light on the Farallons.

I’ve been photographing the Golden Gate steadily for years for my book 100 Views of the Golden Gate. The photos for the book were all selected at the beginning of December–and I thought I needed a break from Golden Gate photography. But I can’t stay away. The truth is that the Golden Gate’s combination of topography, weather, and engineering produces an infinite variety. Whatever my mood, there’s a satisfying and interesting way to photograph the Golden Gate.

[Nikon D300, 70-200VR Zoom lens with 2X teleconverter at 140mm (210mm in 35mm equivalent terms), 30 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Sailboat, photo by Harold Davis.

I took this photo from the end of the Berkeley Pier several years ago. Looking through my files recently, I was struck by the contrast between the colorful sailboat and everything else.

[600mm in 35mm terms, 1/1000 of a seond at f/5.6 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.]