In a break in the early autumn rains, I headed for Indian Rock to photograph sunset. The sun glowed through the scudding clouds for a moment, and then a solid bank of gray quickly filled the sky.
[52.5mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1/100 of a second at f/13 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
Phyllis and I ended the afternoon that began with a hike down to Cataract Falls and water drops with a visit to the wharf near Fort Point. In time for sunset behind the Golden Gate. We clambered down large, slick boulders onto this pocket beach, and camera on tripod I used a thirty second exposure to turn the waves silken soft.
[52.5mm in 35mm terms, 30 seconds at f/29 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
This happy frog is a mosaic detail from the wonderful “magic stairway” at 16th Ave and Moraga in San Francisco.
[105mm f/2.8 macro lens, 157.5mm in 35mm terms, 1/15 of a second at f/36 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
This photo shows the Marin Headlands landscape just after dark from the Point Bonita Lighthouse. Mark and I were lucky enough to be able to photograph from the lighthouse after sunset last week on a docent-led photo tour. The shadow on the massive cliff is of the walkway over to the lighthouse, and the lights in the distance are Muir Beach.
I’m using this photo to mark roughly my 1000th post on Photoblog 2.0. Literally, this is post number 1004, but I have deleted a few posts now and then. So, roughly, a millenium of stories and photos. And, by the way, my photostream on Flickr just passed the quarter of million views mark (yes, that is 250,000!). So, welcome the new millenium.
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In the beginning: Who put these ducks adrift in a bathtub so wide? Read more. |
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Post 101: I’m continuing to play with my marbles… Read more. |
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Post 201: Should I buy a Canon or a Nikon? Read more. |
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Post 300: Julian and I went over to Indian Rock for sunset… Read more. |
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Post 400: I’m pleased to present this triptych of poppy photos… Read more. |
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Post 500: Some people have bird baths, plastic gnomes, wishing wells, or pink flamingos in their garden… Read more. |
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Post 598: I’ve been reading Dan Margulis’s masterful Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace… Read more. |
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Post 700: The patterns in this image of the forest in snow don’t make for a grand statement… Read more. |
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Post 800: This is a photo of early morning in Yosemite Valley from Leidig Meadow… Read more. |
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Post 900: A great bank of fog has covered the Bay area, so it’s a little hard to remember that this past week was summer… Read more. |
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Post 1001: I’ve never blogged this photogram of a Peruvian Lily… Read more. |
Last night was balmy and almost tropical on the Berkeley Pier, as Mike and I took pictures of the Golden Gate. This was my last exposure of the evening, at a bit over three minutes.
[142.5mm in 35mm equiavlent terms, 195 seconds at f6.3 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
The sun had just set and the wind was blowing in on the Muir Beach overlook. You can see the wind whistling over the ocean straight towards the camera, and the lights of a few cars along coastal Highway California 1.
[27mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1.3 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO 100.]
Yesterday at dusk I watched the setting sun race an incoming storm over the Golden Gate.
[300mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 30 seconds at f/25 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
Landscape photographers know that there is nothing more important than light. Learning to pay attention to light is a major job requirement. Tracking the sun is part of this job. That’s easy you say, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Well, no.
To quote the loquacious cob in E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan:
There are all those in-between directions: north-northeast, east southest, west-southwest. There’s north by east, and east by north. There’s south-southeast a half east and there’s west by north a half north.
Taking sunset, the point at which the sun hits the western horizon varies from north to south, from summer solstice (north) to winter solstice (south). I suppose this is probably reversed if you are on the opposite hemisphere of the earth (I’d like to hear from someone who can confirm this). At the equinoxes, the sun would be about smack dab in the middle of its setting range north to south along the western horizon. The extent of the north to south range, and the daily difference between setting points, is determined by latitude (how far north or south you are).
Photographs of sunset behind the Golden Gate are usually better when the sun is behind (or not that far from either side) of the bridge. This happens twice a year during the annual migration of sunset points, roughly speaking in November and February. Since I enjoy photographing the Golden Gate over time, it’s important to me to keep track of the sun in relation to the bridge. (A book of my photos of the Golden Gate, 100 Views of the Golden Gate , will be appearing in 2008.)
The photo above was taken in early February of 2006. The sun was setting just to the right of the bridge, as you can see in this photo earlier in the same set of captures.
We parked Mark’s truck near the Pelican Inn behind Muir Beach and drove in my car over to the Tennessee Beach trailhead parking lot. There was a stiff wind blowing, with some roiling clouds to the north. The parking lot was full of high school kids running a race.
In our hiking boots, backpacks and tripods on our backs, we headed down the easy trail, and then up, to the north, towards the ridgeline and away from the crowds come for the race. A fairly short, but very steep, climb got us to the top of the line of hills marching down to the sea. We took a shortcut down to the Coastline Trail, and joined it just to the north of Pirate’s Cove.
By the time we’d hiked along the trail to the point above the south end of Muir Beach, the wind had picked up to over forty miles an hour. I took a handheld grabshot back at the spectacular coast, and was almost blown over the edge.
It was nearly 6PM, with sunset a little before 7:30. We decided that the best way to go was to get some dinner at the Pelican Inn, and then find a good place to photograph sunset. After crab cakes and apple crisp with ice cream (me) and fish and chips with beer (Mark) we headed out for the Muir Beach Overlook to the north of Muir Beach.
The wind had gone down a bit, but there was still plenty of windchill. We fumbled out in the dusk on the walkway, and I took some exposures in the 20-30 second zone in both directions. The clouds we had seen earlier had blown up from the north, and were now in position, reflecting both city lights and the last of the sunset. If you look closely, you can see the Coastline Trail to the south of Muir Beach where we had hiked earlier in the day.
By now, it was dark and a ranger came out to say they were shutting the parking lot, and we chatted a bit. Mark drove me back around to my car, and I headed home across the Bay.
A mild but fun adventure, and a good antidote for the “sitting at the computer too long” blues.
[150mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 25 seconds at f/6.3 and ISO 100.]
As I watched the clouds swirl through the Golden Gate, I turned and saw the setting sun beside Mount Tamalpais. This time the sun wasn’t entirely blown out.
[600mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1/20 of a second and f/32 at ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
Some of my related photos of Mt Tamalpais: Mt Tamalpais from Euclid Avenue, Mt Tamalpais from Diablo, Tamalpais from Mission Peak, Fog Rolling in Across the Bay. As you can see, I like Mt Tam a lot!
When the clouds blow in the Golden Gate (which is often) and when there’s also a blue sky over the Bay (which is sometimes), then there will be a spectacular show at sunset.
To witness yesterday’s show, I started at the Inspiration Point parking lot at about 5PM and hiked to Wildcat Peak. I had a book with me, and read for a while until the performance started to move quickly. Within minutes after this shot, the sun had set and the Golden Gate was hidden in an inpenetrable layer of fog.
[130mm, 195mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1/320 of a second at f/9 and ISO 100, handheld.]
I played a game with the waves on Stinson Beach. I positioned my tripod below the tide line and tried to capture the movement of the waves. The waves tried to make me grab camera and tripod and run from the spot.
A great way to start thinking about vacation.
Returning home after an afternoon hike in Steep Ravine followed by dinner and sunset photography on Stinson Beach, Mark and I stopped beside the road between Stinson Beach and Muir Beach. The crescent moon was headed down into a cloud bank, and I raced the descent of the moon as I assembled my camera and tripod in the dusk. The photograph shows the tip of the Bolinas peninsula and Duxbury Reef gleaming in the moonlight.
[200mm, 300mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 13 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
This is a photo from the end of the Berkeley Pier looking towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The Berkeley pier seems like it goes half way across San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz, but at one time it must have stretched futher than it does now. The boards block the end of the pier, prevent people from falling into the water, and make a good canvas for graffitists.
When taking the photo, I positioned myself well back from the boards at the end of the pier, used a moderately telephoto lens, a decently long exposure, and stopped the lens down as far as possible. The point of these choices was to maximize depth-of-field and get boards and the Golden Gate Bridge in focus (with the partially blurred water a bonus). [62mm focal length for 93mm equivalence in 35mm terms, 3/5 of a second at f/32, tripod mounted.]
I exposed the original RAW capture for the Golden Gate Bridge, which meant that the boards in the foreground of the photo appeared very dark and underexposed. To correct this problem, and bring out the wonderful glowing colors on these boards, I needed to do a second pass at the RAW original, correcting the exposure values with the boards in mind.
The two versions, one corrected for the Golden Gate Bridge, sky, and water and the other using exposure settings for the boards needed to be combined as layers using a mask. If I’d applied the light exposure values I used on the boards to the bridge, the bridge would have been overexposed, so the point of the mask was to selectively apply the exposure values.
I was able to create an appropriate mask by converting a duplicate of the darker version of the image to LAB color. Next, I dropped the A and B channels of the image, leaving just the luminosity information. I used an adjustment curve to heighten the contrast, and converted the image to grayscale. I used Photoshop’s Image > Apply Image command to use this black-and-white version, which showed the boards as black shapes and everything else as white, in my original, layered image. A little hand painting on the mask finished the job.
Here’s why the process I used to create this image from a single RAW photo is not exactly High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography.
Only a fifteen second exposure, with more light than you’d expect: the bank of clouds surrounding the moon acting like a giant source of diffusion lighting.
Related stories: Multi-RAW Processing versus automated HDR, Taming Extravagant Dynamic Range, Golden Gate Moonrise.
