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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
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
Christmas Sunrise SF Bay Bridge San Francisco, California For the past couple of years my buddy Zack and I have woken up early and driven to San Francisco for sunrise on Christmas morning. Being Jewish and not celebrating Christmas we're both usually away from our family, our friends are with their family, and the city is completely dead, which is perfect for photos. Unfortunately for us we left my apartment a little bit later than planned and got to Pier 14 just as the light was started to get good. I raced to try to setup my camera, figure out the framing, and start snapping away … then realized I wanted some filters and had to race to put on the Lee Filter holder and filters. All in all - I didn't really get a chance to figure out my composition, how many pylons I wanted, which pylons were the best to include, etc. It happened to be low tide (mostly low) so we got a good amount of the pylons showing, and there was enough cloud coverage to provide some color, but it was totally hazy/foggy and made the scene a bit eery. In fact, the light reflections from Oakland didn't come through at all, and I think I didn't get setup in time to capture the light reflections from the bridge. There were a bunch of seagulls flying around the scene too, and you can just make out a seagull on the left-most pylon who happened to sit there for a good majority of the ~6 minute exposure! I'm not in love with this photo but I wanted to make sure to capture something from pier 14 before the America's Cup comes to SF and the renovations remove these classic pylons. This is one of the most photographed spot in SF and it will become a thing of the past soon :( Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 32mm, f/9, 376 sec, ISO 640 Lee Big Stopper + HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad
Thread the Needle Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California Christmas time in SF means a couple special things for us photographers: The Beacon is lit atop the Transamerica Building and 17,000 lights outline the four Embarcadero Center buildings. Because of this I had 2 shots I really wanted to take: 1) the SF skyline from Treasure Island, under the bay bridge (see previous photo), and 2) "Thread the Needle" -- the Transamerica Beacon taken through the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. Having already shot the skyline from Treasure Island I needed to go back and get The Beacon in the GGB. I convinced my friend Zack to leave work and drive up to SF with me. Luckily the traffic was pretty light and we made it to Marin in plenty of time to setup and wait for the blue hour. Zack's D70x wasn't really working so I leant him my D300s while I used the D700. Having been here before I knew that I really wanted ~300mm on a DX body so I was going to have to hope that my 70-300mm lens on the D700 would be good enough and I could just crop it. Unfortunately, the 70-300mm is not exactly the best lens, produces ugly lightstars and didn't take very good pictures. Just as blue hour (or the 5 minutes of it) hit, I asked Zack to switch lenses and borrowed his 80-200 f/2.8 lens, which was MUCH better. I tried numerous different compositions, and I even have the typical close crop of this but ultimately I liked including the bridge in this photo. I think it shows more of the scene and puts a little more focus on San Francisco as opposed to a tighter cropping focusing on the beacon. We call this "threading the needle" because the Beacon, which looks like a needle, fits perfectly in the north tower of the GGB. Note that the photo may looks like it's not properly leveled because the bridge appears to go up in the photo … I assure you that this photo is actually level (and I even double checked before/after I took the photo), it's just an illusion due to the angle the photo was taken. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF 155mm, f/11, ISO 250, 30 sec, Tripod
Holiday City SF Bay Bridge and Skyline San Francisco, California Willie and I have been wanting to take the now popular San Francisco skyline photo from under the Bay Bridge for a while now. The photo is much much nicer during the holiday time when the lights outlining the buildings are turned on and a bright white light (called The Beacon) is turned on at the Transamerica Building (the triangular building). Willie checked the webcams for a couple nights this week and it looked like The Beacon was on, and I got confirmation from a friend in the city that it was also on (although, she described it as a "blinking light" -- I should have known this was bad information … read more about that). We left work early and headed out to Treasure Island with plenty of time to find parking, hike up the hill, find "the spot" and then get setup. Unfortunately when US-101 and I-280 merged we hit a HUGE Friday afternoon holiday traffic. We arrived at Treasure Island much much later than planned (almost an hour later), and had to high tail it up the hill and over the Bay Bridge (we were both sweating pretty badly). After hopping the guard rail we actually found the spot pretty easily (just as we were walking over the Bridge a CalTrans truck drove by and screamed over the loud speaker "No photographs from this side of the bridge." We kept walking). We scouted out the area for a while, found our spots and then waited for the light to get nice. Luckily for us there was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL sunset that night, which makes the photo much more interesting. As the sun went down we could start making out the lights on the buildings, first some random window lights, then the building outlines, and then a light on top of the Transamerica Building. A light … a red blinking light … NOT the white BEACON we were hoping for. In fact, The Beacon *never* showed up for us :( We still came away with a great shot but both Willie and I felt jipped because The Beacon is the icing on the cake of this classic shot. We're going to have to re-attempt it another time :( Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 42mm, f/16, 30 sec, ISO 125 No filters, NOT an HDR (all from 1 exposure)
Good Morning! Fog Over Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California I've been checking the California weather this past week and getting really excited that cloudy skies are coming and we're going to have some coastal shots to start taking! In the mean time, I've got a second photo from our awesome Golden Gate Sunset that I wanted to post. I really liked how the sunrise reflected off the low'ish fog on the morning of Sept 23rd. We're still hoping to get some lower fog but this still came out pretty neat. A less boring sky would have been nice too, but hey, beggars can't be choosers! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S 70mm, f/10, 13 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod HiTech 3-stop Reverse ND Grad, and 2-stop ND Grad
Foggy Sunrise Fog Over Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California I liked this photo because the light around the south tower (the right tower) is amazing. I'm not really sure why I didn't post this as my original flickr photo -- I think I wanted to originally go with a wider crop (the photo I did post) but decided to them crop it down similar to this shot. I actually prefer this photo now that I already posted the other one :P Last week Willie and I made an attempt at getting the Golden Gate Bridge with low fog. Unfortunately there was either no fog, too much fog, or back to no fog. This week the fog has been nice and low but we were watching it on the webcams from our homes and not with our own eyes. We decided to wake up early this morning and drive up and hope the fog would cooperate. Luckily, it did … mostly! It was a bit higher than we wanted but it still managed to show enough of the bridge to make the photo kinda interesting. We're gonna keep trying (we even found a better spot to shoot from for next time). This is a 4 shot stitched panoramic. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S 38mm, f/10, 34 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod HiTech 3-stop Reverse ND Grad, and 2-stop ND Grad A Black and White version of this photo is also available.
Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Baker Pier Taken on Christmas Day, December 25, 2008 in San Francisco California
Golden Gate Bridge Sunrise Christmas Day Marin Headlands, California
Good Morning!
Fog Over Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco, California

I've been checking the California weather this past week and getting really excited that cloudy skies are coming and we're going to have some coastal shots to start taking! In the mean time, I've got a second photo from our awesome Golden Gate Sunset that I wanted to post.

I really liked how the sunrise reflected off the low'ish fog on the morning of Sept 23rd. We're still hoping to get some lower fog but this still came out pretty neat. A less boring sky would have been nice too, but hey, beggars can't be choosers!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S
70mm, f/10, 13 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod
HiTech 3-stop Reverse ND Grad, and 2-stop ND Grad
Good Morning! Fog Over Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California I've been checking the California weather this past week and getting really excited that cloudy skies are coming and we're going to have some coastal shots to start taking! In the mean time, I've got a second photo from our awesome Golden Gate Sunset that I wanted to post. I really liked how the sunrise reflected off the low'ish fog on the morning of Sept 23rd. We're still hoping to get some lower fog but this still came out pretty neat. A less boring sky would have been nice too, but hey, beggars can't be choosers! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S 70mm, f/10, 13 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod HiTech 3-stop Reverse ND Grad, and 2-stop ND Grad" href="javascript:openLB(1509865702,'',XLarge,'',1024,680);">Good Morning! Fog Over Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California I've been checking the California weather this past week and getting really excited that cloudy skies are coming and we're going to have some coastal shots to start taking! In the mean time, I've got a second photo from our awesome Golden Gate Sunset that I wanted to post. I really liked how the sunrise reflected off the low'ish fog on the morning of Sept 23rd. We're still hoping to get some lower fog but this still came out pretty neat. A less boring sky would have been nice too, but hey, beggars can't be choosers! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S 70mm, f/10, 13 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod HiTech 3-stop Reverse ND Grad, and 2-stop ND Grad
Good Morning!
Fog Over Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco, California

I've been checking the California weather this past week and getting really excited that cloudy skies are coming and we're going to have some coastal shots to start taking! In the mean time, I've got a second photo from our awesome Golden Gate Sunset that I wanted to post.

I really liked how the sunrise reflected off the low'ish fog on the morning of Sept 23rd. We're still hoping to get some lower fog but this still came out pretty neat. A less boring sky would have been nice too, but hey, beggars can't be choosers!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S
70mm, f/10, 13 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod
HiTech 3-stop Reverse ND Grad, and 2-stop ND Grad
See photo in original gallery.
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