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Aaron Meyers  > Places > West Coast > San Francisco & Bay Area
Photos from beautiful San Francisco, California
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< 27 of 53 >
Boatworks Golden Gate Bridge, 75th Birthday Fireworks Celebration Slacker Hill, Marin Headlands, CA The GGB is a special structure for many of the local San Francisco photographers and although I don't get up here as much as I'd like, I always admire the beauty of not only the bridge, but the landscape in which it was built into. Knowing that parking would be limited and photographers would be out for this special celebration I arrived early (9 hours early or so) with Zack and Wilson and hiked to the top of Slacker Hill. Shortly after Jave, Alan, Jared, Carl, and Toby showed up and a number of photographers followed. During the time we waited we hung out, got to know each other, grilled some sausages, and eventually started debating if there was a better spot for the fireworks. Alan disappeared and when he came back he swore that there was a better spot. So off Jared, Alan, and I go, down a steep hill and over to a bunker that was lower, further west, and hopefully had a better view. While "better" may be relative, we all decided to stay and shoot from this location instead of the normal Slacker Hill composition. We had some time to kill before the fireworks and as the sun set and blue hour began I could hear photographers all around me firing away. The color in the sky was behind us but blue hour is always pretty when you're looking at the Golden Gate Bridge. BY the time blue hour began I noticed a lot of boats had gotten into position waiting for the fireworks to start. I thought they might pose an interesting subject for a photo so I dialed the ISO down, set the aperture to f/13 for some decent light-stars, and clicked away. It took 90 seconds to get the exposure right and in that time the boats moved all around, creating an interesting abstract effect of color, movement, and an almost semi-firework in the water. I have another photo with much sharper boats (at a higher ISO and faster shutter) but I thought this was much more interesting. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f/13, 90 sec, ISO 250, Tripod No filters used because I was too lazy. I under-exposed slightly to keep the sky from blowing out and then pulled the rest of the photo up.
Annular Solar Eclipse Stanford Dish Palo Alto, CA Update: View my timelapse video of the entire event here. An annular solar eclipse doesn't happen all that often but on May 20, 2012 it happened to fall on the same day as one of my favorite Bay Area California events: Bay to Breakers (B2B). B2B is a race from one end of the SF Bay to the other end of SF by the Ocean (thus "Bay" to "Breakers"). While a number of people actually run the race, the real fun is for all the non-runners who dress up in costumes, have a couple drinks, and then just have one big massive party as they walk the course (usually not getting to the end). Instead of skipping B2B and driving up to Tahoe or Reno to witness the full annual eclipse, I decided to compromise and did both. My group of friends decided to dress as American Gladiators. Our costumes turned out great and I had an absolute blast. Unfortunately, we had so much fun that I didn't get home until 5:15pm -- right when the annual solar eclipse was starting! I changed out of my costume, grabbed my gear, and raced to the Stanford Dish, which is both a hiking trail and a giant Satellite Dish that a number of small satellites communicate with. The hike is paved, wide open, and a bit higher in elevation. I figured I'd get a good view of the sun from there. When I arrived I had planned on hiking to the highest point on the hike. As soon as I went up the first big hill I noticed a very large group of people viewing the eclipse from right there. Not only was the spot good enough, but it also had a perfect view of "The Dish". I figured I could get a photo of the eclipse and blend it in with a photo of The Dish (I later decided perhaps I won't cheat and do this). I setup shop and started snapping away. To get this shot I had to buy a special Solar Filter for my camera -- essentially a really dark cover for the camera -- so that I didn't fry my sensor. It pretty much kills all light and only lets the sun in, so all I saw with the sun and a bunch of black. At the same time as buying the filter, I picked up a bunch of 99cent solar glasses for viewing with your eye. I brought a couple with me in case people would appreciate sharing. Turns out I was right -- by the end of the evening I had a large group of new friends that were all huddled around me, sharing the solar glasses or looking at the photos through my camera. Eventually I just left the camera on LiveView as my intervalometer clicked away photos every 20 seconds. I put them 11 photos together onto one image to show you how the 90% of the moon covered the sun! I met a number of really wonderful people today. It was so fun to share the solar glasses and the photos from my camera with all of you. I hope your children also have a renewed excitement for science education! The next solar eclipse will occur on August 20th, 2017 and will be a total eclipse as it crosses from the Columbia River through Georgia. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 200mm, f/5, 1/60 sec sec, ISO 400 11 photos combined in Photoshop CS5
Thomas Fog-erty Sunset above Thomas Fogarty Winery Woodside, California When people think of California wine they typically think of one of 2 (or 3) main areas: Napa Valley, Sonoma County, and the up-and-coming Paso Robles regions. Many people living in Silicon Valley might not realize that there's a whole slew of wonderful wineries right in their backyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains … places like Ridge Winery (one of my favorites and also one of my wine clubs), Picchetti, Hall Crest, and Thomas Fogarty Winery. Ridge and Fogarty sit on top of the Silicon Valley side of the Santa Cruz mountains and have absolutely *gorgeous* views of the entire Bay Area; on a clear day you can see all the way from San Francisco to San Jose. I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend a Friday evening event at Thomas Fogarty winery that happened to take place right during sunset. I brought my camera with me in case some clouds rolled in and sure enough I managed to sneak out and capture this surprise of a sunset. I hadn't expected there to be any color in the sky but as I looked out towards San Francisco I noticed both clouds and fog rolling in. To my delight the fog created a mystical feel to the beautiful sunset at the winery. I tried to keep the vineyard in my composition to give a better sense of where this place is and how lucky these people are to own a vineyard up here. I was really impressed by how quickly the fog rolled in. This is a single exposure brought into LR4 and Photoshop CS5 with some minor doging/burning, and some color/contrast alterations (removed the HiTech Reverse ND Grad color cast and then I spent a long time trying to make the green feel right and eventually gave up as the best I could do). Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 48mm, f/13, 3.0 sec, ISO 200 HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad + HiTech 0.9 Soft ND Grad
Marshall's Sunset Marshall Beach San Francisco, California Willie and I went to Marshall Beach a couple months ago hoping to catch a nice sunset above the Golden Gate Bridge (GGB) but came home with nothing. Willie went back and although there was a nice sunset along the coast, again, the GGB stayed gray. Hoping that the 3rd time one of us visited this beach would be the charm I grabbed my gear on Easter Sunday and drove up to Marshall Beach. I arrived about an hour early and was pretty excited. The entire drive up to SF had some beautiful looking clouds and I was hoping it would stay that way. Of course as the sun began to set the fog started to roll in … sorta. There was just a wispy patch here and there. Some bigger clouds rolled in with some boring texture (see the photo above), but nothing too awful. Along the horizon a couple clouds rolled in and I sat there praying that they wouldn't block the sunset. To my horror, some thickish clouds perched right in front of the sun and blocked most of the sun from getting through. Enough light made it to give a slight glow to the clouds and a little bit of recovery in Lightroom brought out the purple and pinks that you see above (I only brought saturation up +5 in this). Trying to figure out a composition for this shot was a little difficult. The area that I had scouted previously and really liked was under water. Low tide was finishing up just as I arrived sunset would be on its way towards high(er) tide. The problem was I didn't know how high it would rise before sunset. There were a couple options for compositions and I ran the risk of choosing some rocks that would either be completely underwater or perhaps completely void of water. Fortunately I chose wisely and the waves covered these 4 sets of rocks just as the sun was setting. I liked that they made a little semi-circular shape, with the rock in the back left getting some spray from the incoming waves. Overall I was pretty pleased with how the photo came out! On my way out I was approached by another photographer, Tran Mai, and we had a nice chat about photography, photo-outings, and places to shoot. Apparently there's a big SF crowd that gets together often and she mentioned she'd include me in the future. I'm excited to meet the crew! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 28mm, f/14, 1/5 sec, ISO 200 Lee Filter Holder + 0.9 HiTech Soft ND Grad
Eagle Ray Sunrise at Eagle Falls Lake Tahoe, California After Willie and I watched a beautiful sunrise over Emerald Bay we decided to see how easy it would be to find Eagle Falls. We knew the general location but we weren't sure if the falls was right off the trail, if we had to hike down to the lake, or what. Turns out it's a LOT easier to find than we thought. And by a lot easier I mean it's literally right off the road (you can see it from the road). It took a little bit of log walking, tree branch hangin' on, and some skippin' over rocks to get over here to get the composition we wanted. By this time the clouds were rollin' in pretty heavily and although we knew the color was gone we thought we'd have some fun taking some test shots anyways. I wanted to use the branches to add some interest to the foreground as well as frame the shot. I figured the tree could help frame this as well. The sunrise managed to squeak through the clouds and made a couple light-rays which I thought were neat. Without any color I thought I'd turn this into a black and white and see how it turned out. I used Nik's Silver Efex Pro to convert this and pull out some contrast and structure in the photo. Did I over process this? After the conversion I tried to pull the contrast back even more but I think a lot of that motion was in the RAW file from the long exposure. Thoughts? Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/9, 0.5 sec, ISO 100 B+W Circular Polarizer + HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND
Emerald Jewels Emerald Bay Sunrise Lake Tahoe, California A couple weeks ago Willie asked me to reserve the weekend of March 30, 2012 for a photo-trip. About the same time, my roommate and a bunch of my friends decided to make that same weekend a Tahoe get-away/ski-trip weekend. I wanted to do both so I convinced Willie to join and we'd shoot Lake Tahoe. We had been monitoring the weather all week and it seemed like every 5 hours the report changed. A large storm was rolling in but nobody could decide when exactly it would hit. We knew we wanted to shoot Bonsai Rock (which I have previously photographed) and Emerald Bay. Planning this photo trip turned into a nightmare because we weren't sure what sunrises or sunsets would be good and we couldn't figure out if the roads would even be open. The road to Emerald Bay had been closed all week due to snow / avalanche control but finally opened as we drove up to Tahoe. Friday night we drove to Bonsai Rock and had a skunked sunset (but I did manage to get a photo that I was happy with thanks to the Lee Big Stopper, coming soon). Saturday morning we woke up at 5:15am (ouch), wiped the sand out of eyes and hit the road. I had done some research and found that Emerald Bay was not only really close to our cabin but also pretty easy to photograph. Just pull off on one of the turn-outs, find a spot that doesn't have trees, and shoot. We were the only ones on the road when we got to Emerald Bay and only a few cars passed us as we watched the sunrise. There were a LOT of clouds (as you can see) but we were lucky and an opening in the east allowed the sunrise to sneak through and light up the clouds. We were treated for a beautiful sunrise (finally Mama Nature played nice for us!). Thanks to a super massive wind that had blown in, Emerald Bay also had some neat wave action going on (which you can see in this photo). Willie used his new Singh-Ray Reverse ND Grad and was able to get a large dynamic range with very little clipping. My HiTech Reverse ND isn't as soft and was doing some ugly things to the hill on the left so I had to settle for 2 filters and some bracketing. This shot is a 2-exposure blend, although the underexposed photo was only used in the bright section on the right of the photo, above the mountains and below the clouds. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f/18, 10 sec, ISO 100 Lee Filter Holder + (0.9 + 0.3) HiTech Soft ND Grad's
Streaking Bonsai Bonsai Rock Sunset Lake Tahoe, Nevada Ever since I first saw David Shields photos of Bonsai Rock I had wanted to shoot this location. For the past couple years I've leased a ski cabin with several of my friends for the entire winter. Being so close to Lake Tahoe and Bonsai Rock you'd think it would be easy to get here to shoot. Last year I had made it up to the eastern shore to photograph Bonsai but I waited too long into the year (it was almost May when I made my way over there) and the sun was setting more northerly than I wanted. Willie and I decided to do a Tahoe photo weekend at the end of March, hoping the sunset would still be south-westerly enough for a nice sunset. It was storming all week and we rented a 4 wheel drive SUV for the trip. Hoping to get a great sunset we departed plenty early from my cabin and arrived at Bonsai Rock pretty hopeful. Random side-story: I've driven all over California (and many parts of the United States) over the past 6 years and although I've seen "Caution: falling rocks" signs, I've never actually really paid attention to them or had any issues. On the drive to Bonsai Rock the car in front of me rolled down his window and started waving his arm, pointing to the left, signaling something that I couldn't figure out. He quickly changed lanes and that's when I realized what he meant …. GIANT F'ING BOULDER!!!!!!! There were 3 cars to my left and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the giant rock. This thing would have seriously messed up the SUV. So Mr. Car in front of me … thank you! We arrived at Bonsai Rock with plenty of time before sunset. Last year there was so much snow that the lake level rose fairly significantly. Even with a dry winter the lake level is much higher than we really want for good Bonsai Rock photos. The beautiful foreground rocks are mostly under water. Willie and I spent a couple minutes looking at compositions but with so few rocks exposed we were pretty limited and found our shots pretty quickly. We had plenty of time to kill before sunset and it was partially cloudy so I decided to pull out the Lee Big Stopper and see what kind of effect I could get. I set up a 3.5 minute exposure, clicked the button and sure enough, I got a super neat pattern in the sky. The water was pretty choppy and the long exposure turned the water into glass. Perfect! Now we just need a beautiful sunset and I'll repeat this. Unfortunately we didn't get a sunset (thick clouds blocked the sunset) but I did manage to get a nice long exposure photo! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 36mm, f/16, 3 min 20 sec, ISO 200 Lee Filter Holder + 0.6 HiTech Soft ND Grad + Lee Big Stopper
Broken Marshall Beach San Francisco, California Willie and I haven't had a good photo shoot in a while. All of our Death Valley shoots were a bust and we hoped that Sunday would change our luck. We watched as Saturday and Sunday morning brought amazing sunsets and sunrises yet we stayed in bed out of laziness. Not wanting to miss another good opportunity we hoped in the car and decided to try our luck at Marshall Beach in San Francisco. Neither of us had been here before and Willie was exhausted after a 10 mile hike the day before so I drove us through traffic as we found our way to the Golden Gate Bridge. Due to unexpected traffic we arrived at Marshall Beach much later than we intended. We raced down the mile long hike to the beach (it's pretty steep, but luckily the city of SF built a bunch of steps to make the trail down nice and easy). We got to the beach and quickly realized there were numerous compositions and we ran back and forth trying to find a good one before the sun got low and started lighting up the sky. Eventually we settled on a spot in the back that gave us a composition with rocks that would direct the incoming waves and provide some nice foreground motion. After finding a spot that I liked I got my Lee filter holder, remote shutter, and filters out and began to setup my tripod…. As I pulled open my tripod legs and went to attach my camera to the tripod my heart skipped a beat …. my bullhead looked strange. It was then that I noticed the knob that turns the quick release head to clamp my camera to the tripod was missing. Not a big deal I thought, I can at least use my fingers to turn the screw. Oh wait …. the clamp that moves in and holds the camera in was gone too!!! Completely missing. I have no idea how the entire thing fell off but it meant that my tripod was useless! I'm hoping that Acratech will replace the bullhead, or at least replace the part, for free. I was forced to hand-hold my shots for this shoot. Knowing that we needed long shutters to provide foreground motion Willie suggested that I use a rock to balance the camera. This was a great idea because it gave me a little extra stability without my tripod but it also meant that my compositions were limited to a couple spots. My thoughts of catching waves crashing over some other rocks were dashed. Despite the lack of tripod I still managed to get a number of shots that came out decent and since I was slightly higher up the beach I also managed to stay more dry than Willie, who took a splash over his new rain boots. Unfortunately for us, Mamma Nature is still mad at us and although there were *perfect* clouds above the Golden Gate Bridge, a bunch of low, thick clouds rolled in at the horizon behind us and blocked the light from reaching anywhere. Oh well, Black and White it is, which turned out kinda neat! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 48mm, f/13, 0.4 sec, ISO 640, "Rock" Tripod (see above) Lee Filter Holder + 0.9 HiTech Soft ND Grad
Iggy Gecko, California Academy of Science San Francisco, California
Iggy
Gecko, California Academy of Science
San Francisco, California
Iggy Gecko, California Academy of Science San Francisco, California" href="javascript:openLB(1767371426,'',XLarge,'',1024,682);">Iggy Gecko, California Academy of Science San Francisco, California
Iggy
Gecko, California Academy of Science
San Francisco, California
Nikon D700 |
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Original size: 4256x2832 |
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Keywords: animals aquarium museum lizard branch feet iguana california eye nature academy wildlife science san francisco greenie nikon academy of science 2012 d700 nikon d700 cal academy calacademy aaron meyers photography cal academy of science
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