Posts Tagged: night
Golden Gate | San Francisco, CA
You have to love work trips (at least, I usually don’t mind them as long as they don’t happen TOO often) – most expenses paid for and usually nothing expected of you past 5 PM. Unexpectedly, I had the opportunity to be in the Bay Area this past week and couldn’t find any reason not to head up to the Golden Gate Bridge. I packed my camera, borrowed a co-worker’s rental car, and after a few quick stops to visit some friends in Oakland, I got to Fort Baker right around 11 PM. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect, crisp night – no clouds, no fog, stars overhead, the twinkling of downtown San Francisco and the Bay Bridge off to the left, and the Golden Gate Bridge towering overhead on the right.
Fort Baker is located on the Sausalito (NE) side of the bridge – the only side of the bridge Katie and I didn’t visit last time we were in San Francisco (August 2013). If you drive through the Fort grounds, there’s a long lookout/docking/fishing pier off of Moore Road/Conzleman Road that I would highly recommend for a serene vantage point of the bridge at night. The pier is pretty isolated, as you can only get to it from one direction. I spent about an hour and a half on or around the pier, taking pictures, walking along the shore, and absorbing the scenery. For a little while, I decided to just sit on the pier with my legs hanging over – a dolphin swam by a few times blowing air upwards, a few boats went past in the distance, a coyote actually walked out onto the pier but got scared away by the flashlight of a couple (pictured below) who was on the pier too doing some midnight fishing. An awesome fusion of nature and architecture, as if the surrounding area was unphased and unaffected by this massive feat of engineering and humanity. The sound of cars driving past on the bridge and the waves lapping against the rocks below my feet. An evening I won’t forget for the rest of my life.
P.S. For you technical folks, most of these were taken at 15, 20, or 30 second exposures at ISO 200 and an aperture set somewhere between f/4 and f/9.
Save the Cheerleader…
My wife and I got a chance to visit Baylor University in Waco, TX a couple weekends ago for their homecoming celebrations. Part of these celebrations is a large bonfire, which was kindled with various “Beat Mizzou” and “Tiger Hunting” cardboard signs (Baylor would go on to defeat the Missouri Tigers the following night in the homecoming football game). The entire field around the bonfire was full of people, and there were cheerleaders spread out here and there. I happened to catch this shot, and thought it turned out pretty cool.
The Capitol Hole (Part 3)
I’m not exactly sure what to call this architectural “thing,” but it’s basically a two story hole in the ground that alerts you of the massive underground network of government floorspace beneath the property of the Texas State Capitol. The Capitol building itself is really just the tip of the iceberg. Center-to-center, this “hole” is about 500 feet from the capitol’s dome. You can see it on Google Maps here. And for those who love Wikipedia, here’s an excerpt from the article about the TSC: “To preserve the facade and historic plaza, the new capitol extension was built as a four-story underground structure, completed during 1993. Though the extension encompasses 667,000 square feet, nearly twice the floor space of the original building, there is little evidence of such a large structure at ground level, except for extensive skylights camouflaged as planter rows.” Conveniently, they forgot to mention the structure seen below. Enjoy!
