The enchanting lights and old quasi-industrial look of SOMA under the Bay Bridge capture the feel of San Francisco to me: the relationship with the bay, the sense of history-but-not-quite, and the constant crush of traffic just beneath it.
Tag: Bay
Glowing Handrail
The lighting on this particular evening on San Francisco’s waterfront was spectacular and created this interesting effect as if the handrail on this pier were illuminated. It makes the Bay Bridge seem much more futuristic if you ask me.
Our Own Gold
The water practically glows with reflected light. The buildings tower over the scene. The long exposure captures the trails of aircraft in the night sky. San Francisco’s waterfront along the Embarcadero may not have the most enormous and prestigious structures, but nights like this make that irrelevant. The scene makes “enigmatic” and “cyberpunky” into something almost friendly. (Or at least inviting.)
High atop it all is that fascinating golden penthouse structure. The visual similarity to a treasure chest must be more than coincidence.
An Atavistic Collection
This weekend, I finally conquered a serious challenge: organizing my ancient photo collection. As I went through it, I found some photographs from almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, they weren’t taken with a DSLR, but I’m presenting them here as a taste of compositions, colors, and places that aren’t otherwise found on Decaseconds that frequently. With no further ado:
This is the creek, behind my childhood home, where I spent countless hours building castles, bridges, and walls from sticks and stones. The water comes from the top of nearby Mt. Riga, and is icy cold through most of the year. Somehow, we still managed to handle swimming in it during the summer.
This picture shows the Long Walk of Trinity College in Hartford, CT. This is the oldest part of the school, built when the campus moved to its current location in 1863. This particular day at the end of November was the first snow of the year. Everyone is just a bit surprised, the leaves are still on the trees, and the snow seems wetter than at any other time.
This photograph was taken at the top of Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Though the top of the mountain is barren but for a few shrubs, it turns out that this isn’t because of being above the tree line. Over the course of centuries, the mountain was repeatedly burned, both to make room for livestock and because wolves were living in its caves. Now, just a handful of berry bushes and grasses crust the smooth, ancient stone of the mountain. Some have called it, “the Most Hiked Mountain in America.”
Finally, I have a picture from Key West, Florida. The sunsets and the enormous thunderheads there make for some lovely pictures, but my favorite detail is at the horizon: the poles supporting power lines, alone in the water, bringing electricity from key to key.
Golden Gate City Sandwich
With the sun setting behind me into the Pacific, the light on the Golden Gate Bridge, the city, and the Bay Bridge beyond it (thus the sandwich effect) begins to shift from golden to deep blue. The lights came on just as the rain started to spit, and the whole scene made me wish I’d brought a thermos of hot chocolate with me.
Rainy Day Bridge
Today’s photo, taken just as the rain started to pick up in the Marin Headlands, is one of my favorites. The alignment of this little bridge to the Golden Gate itself, the harbor, the construction equipment, with Angel Island and the rest of the North Bay off in the distance: it all provides a sense of scale and perspective. The way the warm sodium lamps contrast with the colors of the evening bring your eye to the bridge and its gorgeous structural steel. Rigid geometries contrast with the fuzzy plants of the hillside. This is a picture I want to crawl inside.
Both Sides of the Bay II
I’ve shown before how beautiful the Fourth of July can be in the Bay Area; the overlapping sensory inputs of multiple fireworks shows is stunning. This year, the Berkeley Marina’s display was particularly lovely.
Berkeley Balance
One of my favorite views in the Bay Area from from Grizzly Hill. (You might recognize a bit of this picture from an earlier night shoot.) I love the combination of dense city in San Francisco, sylvan suburbs in Berkeley, and proper trees in Strawberry Canyon and LBNL.
Fireworks and the Campanile
And now a quick holiday bonus. I wanted to get this one out while it was fresh in my mind: the glorious experience of watching half a dozen Fourth of July fireworks shows simultaneously. It’s moments like this, gazing over the bay and its gorgeous lights, that I really appreciate living here.
Both Sides of the Bay
The Bay Area has a set of dichotomies that I’ve always loved fitting into photographs. Here, we have the elegance of San Francisco herself, with towers and an array of sailing boats, contrasted with the decay of the East Bay and its own host of boats.
Down on the Pier
I was amazed when I first saw the public fishing pier down at the Berkeley marina as it seems to go on forever. It really is astounding how far out into the bay it extends, even as you walk down there. It’s also always packed with people of all skill levels attempting to get something to bite.
Wind-Powered Ducklings
Berkeley Marina is a wrench-shaped peninsula in the San Francisco Bay; the “handle” supports a bumpy road to the area itself, while the “head” has docks and a smattering of yacht clubs, restaurants, and smaller hotels aimed at the people mooring there. The larger boats (mostly of the sailing variety) are in the center of the Marina, but on the southern side, in a slightly-sheltered area, are the docks for the much smaller boats. Here, locals come to learn the basics of sailing and wind surfing in the shadow of the Port of Oakland and its massive container crains.
Having taken sailing lessons here myself, I can confirm that the placidity is an illusion. In a boat with a center board instead of a keel, the degree of resistance to the wind is much less, and the crew is required to really use their weight to control these little boats. Today’s shot captures the boats as I prefer to remember: ready to sail, but sitting calmly at the dock.
Port, Bridge, and City
Whenever Photomatix releases an update, I like to go back and see what I can do with old RAW files and new software. This shot is a little bit older now, but I fell in love with the way it captures so much of the Bay Area in a single image: the Port of Oakland on the left, bits of Berkeley on the bottom-right, the Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena in the center, and San Francisco itself on the right. For so much of the year, the sky is absolutely clear until the marine layer blankets the bay in fog. The fog was just sliding over the hills as I took this shot; in a few minutes, the city had disappeared.
Setting Sail
During a brief jaunt through Berkeley Marina on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon I was able to catch this shot of an intrepid crew setting sail out into the San Francisco Bay and beyond.
Guarding the Gate
I previously posted a narrower shot of this heavily-graffitied gun battery in the Marin Headlands. It really is incredible how much time and effort have gone into layering art on top of a concrete structure that began as so monolithic and practical. Adding in the encroaching pine needles makes for one Hell of a juxtaposition.
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