Posts Tagged: stars

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter

My apologies for not posting in quite a while.  Although camera issues are probably the worst thing for a photographer, computer issues would be a close second these days, at least for all of us who only shoot digital.  And unfortunately, I had some connectivity issues at the end of 2011 that seem to have been resolved now that I reinstalled Windows and all the programs that I need.  I think it’s beneficial to do a complete system reboot every once in a while and backup all your important data.  (All you Mac snobs can just keep your Windows opinions to yourselves, haha.  My Windows 7 machine does everything I need it to for half the price.  If I have to reinstall Windows every 2 years, so be it.)  Anyways, during my “down time,” I had several good ideas for new posts that should be coming up here shortly, including a BEST OF 2011 post.  If anyone has anything else they’d like to see, please let me know.

Below are some “Winter” images – the ones of the lunar halo (caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere) I just took on Saturday, but the Christmas images are belated due to the aforementioned computer issues.  Consider this my annual Merry Christmas post to you, including my favorite picture of our first Christmas together as “The Wilsons.”