Photoblog 2.0

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

A great bank of fog has covered the Bay area, so it’s a little hard to remember that this past week was summer. It was hot for around here, at least 85 degrees in Berkeley.

On Wednesday, Julian (shown below) had no school, and I took him out to Point Reyes where it was much cooler. We hiked down to Marshall Beach, built a sand castle, hiked back up, then drove over to Drakes Beach and climbed up the bluffs.

Julian was really respectful of the drop to the beach below. He said, “Dad, if someone fell off, they would die, right?”

Right. Good to hear caution from the boy who lived.

We drove back to Berkeley and took a swim at Julian’s grandparents.

By now it was late and Julian was very ready for dinner and bed. But the sun had set and turned the world pink with the haze of summer. I drove up to the parking lot beside the Lawrence Hall of Science, pulled out my tripod, and snapped this twenty-five second time exposure of the Golden Gate in summer.

Dear reader: I’m off this week to Yosemite to photograph digital night in the mountains, so most likely no blog stories until I get back.

Silicon Valley from Mission Peak, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a thirty second time exposure from the top of Mission Peak. It is looking down the slopes of Mission Peak across Fremont and the San Francisco Bay straight at Palo Alto and Mountain View. You can see the same clouds in an earlier exposure from the same series, focused to the south on San Jose.

If Silicon Valley is the beast, then this is an image of the belly of the beast. (Mission Peak has also been described as a beast, meaning that it is a tough hike.)

I’m ambivalent about Silicon Valley. On the one hand, I have to admire the gusto and inventivity that has sprung from the Silicon Valleys of the world. On the other hand I’ve spent a bit too much of my life working on pointless projects with bloated code and following irrational change control procedures.

You also have to admit there is something ugly about a culture that turns ranch land to a car culture wasteland of high-tech industrial parks and McMansions.

But I rant. I rave! The beast is indeed ugly, but it has beauty too. There’s beauty in the belly of the beast. And that’s what this photo means to me.

Related stories: Improv on Mission Peak; Above the Urban Sprawl; Mount Tamalpais from Mission Peak; Do You Know the Way?.

Eucalyptus Grove in the Fog, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

We’ve been living under a cloud cover in the San Francisco Bay area for the last week, sometimes high clouds, sometimes low fog, sometimes bright, sometimes not, but always grey. Since the weather around here is generally wonderful, I’ve no right to complain. But it does make night photography kind of questionable.

Yesterday Mark was over in East Bay on business, and I thought it would be nice to show him Wildcat Peak in Tilden Park, since we’ve done so much walking around the Marin Headlands in his “back yard.”

After dinner, we set off from Inspiration Point. Normally, there’s a panoramic view from Wildcat of the Golden Gate, San Pablo Bay, Mount Diablo, Tamalpais, and more. But last night everything was socked in with a thick wall of fog. It was chilly, in the low forties, and a stiff wind blew. We didn’t linger on the summit.

Coming down from Wildcat Peak past the Memorial Grove, I stopped along Nimitz Way in the Eucalyptus grove. The trees were creaking and groaning in the wind. In the background, there was a bright white light, possibly the moon coming through the clouds.

Using my 12-24mm wide-angle lens, I placed my camera on my tripod and exposed this image for 80 seconds. Long enough to capture the trees in the dim light, and to let the moving branches turn kind of “liquid” as they moved in the foggy time exposure.

Tamalpais from Mission Peak, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This view looks north from the summit of Mission Peak. Mission Boulevard points in a straight line towards Mount Tamalpais, which sticks out of the fog bank like an island in the sea of clouds.

Above the Urban Sprawl, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This photo from the summit of Mission Peak looks north past Hayward up the San Francisco Bay.

Depending on how you look at it, my life is pretty insular or serene. It takes a vista like this to remind me how many people there are around here, hustling and bustling in their busy lives.

Related story: Improv on Mission Peak.

Diablo from Mission Peak, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Jack invited me on a hike up Mission Peak, along with his friend Eric. The plan was to meet in the late afternoon for an early supper, then get to the top of Mission Peak in plenty of time for sunset, staying until it was dark so I could photograph the landscape at night.

Mission Peak was a new destination for me. It rises from the East Bay hills, more-or-less to the east of Fremont. The trailhead has an amazing feel to it. There are quandrangle after quandrangle of gated McMansions, and you park right near some of these structures with their faux porticos and feel of conspicuous tastelessness. But right away when you start up the trail there is nothing around you but the empty spaces of the California hills, at this time of year golden brown and ascetic. In the distance the world bustles: if you know where to look you can pick out the Google campus, Palo Alto, and much more. It’s hard to miss the acres of shining new cars for sale in the Automall far below.

It’s roughly a three mile climb up to Mission Peak at about 2500 feet, starting from near sea level. So this is a bit of a trek, and it is possible to imagine unprepared hikers on a hot summer day having a pretty tough time. There’s an actual summit approach up a ridge line, and in a kind of minature way more like a “real” mountain summit than anything else I’ve experienced in the Bay area. (Diablo and Tamalpais are mountain-like, but you can drive up them, and they don’t have Mission’s pronounced summit.)

I imagine I have a good twenty years on Jack, who in any case seems to do triathalons before breakfast. So I tried not to feel patronized when he expressed concern about whether I was in shape for the hike, and later at the summit when he gave me a “Good job” like I do with Julian, my nine-year-old, when he finishes a hike that is tough for him.

Actually, it was totally sweet of Jack to be concerned about me, and I enjoyed getting to know Jack and Eric, and really appreciated their company as sunset turned towards night, and on our descent in the night. So a special vote of thanks to Jack and Eric for introducing me to a wonderful new hike, and for being such great company. (You can read Jack’s blog here, and his Friday Mission Peak Hike story here.)

But going back to the starting moments of this adventure, when I opened the trunk of my car to put on my hiking boots and grab my camera pack, I found I had left my tripod at home. I’d been rushing to get alot of things done before the hike, and then wanted to beat the Friday rush hour down I580 to south bay. As I’d backed out the garage, I’d had this nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something, but, alas, I had dismissed the feeling.

So I wasn’t going to bag the hike, and home was too long a drive to go and get my tripod. You need a way to keep a camera steady to take long exposures at night. What was I going to do?

Part of being a good photographer is being willing to improvise, to look for creative solutions, even when the materials at hand aren’t perfect.

On top of Mission Peak there’s an old, hollow pipe that sticks about a foot out of the ground. I was able to plant my camera in the top of this pipe. Using a bunch of small rocks, I could pretty much get stable time exposures in all directions. Admittedly without the flexibility and precision of my tripod, but still, it worked.

The photo above is a thirty second exposure showing Mount Diablo, Pleasanton, I680, and a fog bank sweeping across the hills. The photo below is a cropped detail showing the upper San Francisco Bay beneath a cloud bank, with “the peninsula” behind.

The summit of Mission Peak is truly a grand view in all directions, and I’ll be posting more photos as I post-process them. I’m sure I’ll also be going back. Up there, you get this weird feeling of aloneness. You are witnessing suburban sprawl and the intense hum of human activity in Silicon Valley. But you are witnessing it as an eagle might, high above it all.

Coming down at about 11PM, the trail seemed endless. We passed a California King Snake on the trail, who seemed more awake and alert than we were.

Then it was back among the McMansions in the cubicle world, and drive drive drive up the endless freeway until I reached home with my family fast asleep.

View this image larger.

City Lights, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a long exposure (120 seconds) with my 10.5mm digital fisheye lens photographed into night. Standing on my aerie, I pointed the camera in the opposite direction from Tennessee Beach Sunset.

In the photo, you are looking south. You can see the cliffs of the Marin Headlands, then the gap made by the Golden Gate, followed by the lights of south San Francisco. Airplanes and a ship have turned into trails of light due to the time exposure.

As I’ve said before, I think there is something very eerie about standing on an aerie in the dark wilderness photographing the lights of the city.

Mount Tamalpais, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

With the shutter open for five minutes, my sensor picks up all kinds of ambient light on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. Cars snaking their way up and down Panoramic Highway, houses on the ridge leading up to the peak, a red light on the summit, and the glow of ambient light from Mill Valley and other Marin cities reflecting on the mountain.

How different the landscape looks under the daytime sun.

Related stories: Mount Tamalpais from Euclid Avenue; Maserati and Mount Diablo; Digital Darkness; On Night Photography.

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

This is a time exposure straight into full night. The photo was taken from a little hillock beside the Panaromic Highway facing the hills of Marin Headlands and looking back towards San Francisco. The sliver moon had just set, and it was really pretty dark. I had the camera with a fully open lens, and exposed for five minutes.

The glow in the sky doesn’t come from the setting sun (the sun would have to set in the southeast!). This is ambient light from San Francisco.

Approaching the Bridge, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This was the first exposure I took looking back at the Golden Gate Bridge from the Coastal Trail. I was standing in near darkness, to the north of the approach to the bridge.

I exposed the image for thirty seconds, and when I looked at it large on my computer I was pleased to see the way the airplane trail in the sky seems to echo the curve of the road with its trail of car lights.

Related stories: Golden Gate at Night; Two Towers; S-Curve; Gerbode Valley.

Two Towers, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a twenty second time exposure of the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can see the communications tower on Twin Peaks behind and to the left of the Golden Gate tower.

Taken with a telephoto lens (the 150mm focal length I used translates to 225mm in 35mm terms), the hilly terrain of San Francisco appears compressed.

I was positioned a couple of miles up the Coastal Trail, looking back at the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge tower is framed by the ridges of the Marin Headlands.

Related stories: Gerbode Valley; S-Curve.

Slacker Ridge, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a three minute time exposure with the lens wide open. Mostly I was photographing the fog and Golden Gate bridge, but for this exposure I turned my camera around on the tripod and pointed it northwest towards the summit of the Slacker Ridge. The ambient light from the bridge and San Francisco is illuminating the brown grass leading up to the ridge, and providing the glow in the sky towards the right (eastwards, towards the Bay) of the photo.

This steep hill sits in the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. Based on the signs I saw, I think Slacker Ridge is home to a mountain lion, lonely lord on the border of city and wild.

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

This is a two minute time exposure of the Golden Gate and San Francisco, taken at night in cold and foggy conditions, from the rather oddly named Slacker Ridge (one of the high points in the Marin Headlands directly above the Golden Gate Bridge).

On Monday night Mark and I had gone hiking on the Coastal Trail high above the 101 Freeway. We reached a ridge that looked towards Gerbode Valley in one direction and back at the Golden Gate Bridge in the other. It may help you to picture the spot to think that we were above and to the west of the Waldo Tunnel, what my family calls the “Rainbow Tunnel.” You go through this tunnel just before you cross the Golden Gate Bridge to reach San Francisco.

Monday was balmy, and as we returned to the car through the almost tropical night I kept looking with longing at the dark heights above us. Clearly, I am becoming obsessed with night photography.

Looking at the Park Service Marin Headlands trail map, I could see that the Coastal Trail made its way around these heights (which were unnamed on the map) to met McCollough Road. The AAA Sausalito-Mill Valley map had a little more detail, and showed a spur trail going up the back of the heights (also unamed on the AAA map) not far from the junction with McCollough Road.

Last night, I decided to try my luck. The evening was variable with some wind and fog, and I figured I’d either face a white-out or maybe get some interesting photos. One of the appeals of night photography, of course, is that you just never know.

I dressed warmly, in woolies top and bottom, a polypro vest, and a down jacket. There was room for my headlamp under my Patagonia balaclava.

It was easy to find the side trail marked on the map. In the physical world, the heights were named on a Park Service sign. As I’ve mentioned, the name was somewhat odd: Slacker Ridge. I didn’t feel like a slacker having marched up there in the gathering night with my camera gear and tripod in my bag on my back, and with the wind and fog from the Pacific getting my clothes and camera gear damp.

The weather may have been chill, but the photo looks warm to me with the drifting fog illuminating the scene unpredictably as the fog moved across the area being captured by the long exposure.

S-Curve, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Behind us, the coyotes sang their eerie song and the stars twinkled over Gerbode Valley. In front, the lights of San Francisco and the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge made a vivid light show.

In this image, I held the shutter open for a minute to turn the motion of the cars into solid streaks of yellow and red light. I also underexposed by a couple of stops at f/11 to allow the background to go black while making the colors of the cars in motion more vivid.

When I saw the image in the Light Table mode of Adobe Bridge, the world was indeed abstracted out of the photo. All I saw was the S-shaped curve made by the car lights. Perhaps a little like the curve one should aim for in Photoshop when editing the Luminosity channel of a photograph in LAB color mode.

Peeking Bridge, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

OK, so this is the Golden Gate Bridge peeking, not a Peking Duck. A cheap shot, I know, but I have a weakness for puns. Also, I’ve been losing weight lately, which tends to make me think of everything in the context of food.

This view is from Coyote Ridge, looking across Tennessee Valley, with the Old Springs Trail passing through a gap in Wolf Ridge and continuing as the Miwok Trail.

The Marin Headlands is amazing as a wilderness so close to San Francisco. As I’ve commented before, I feel more alone (and more at risk) in a wilderness where you can view civilization than a wilderness where, well, there is only wilderness surrounding.

Related story: Pirate’s Cove and Marin Headlands.
Related link: Park service trail map of the Marin Headlands.