HDR Photography
This panorama of the San Francisco skyline (seen from across the Golden Gate in Tiburon) is transient in two senses of the word: because the sunset light takes on this set of specular reflections for only a moment, and because civil engineering has already transformed the skyline to some new form in the time since I took this picture.
Mohonk’s Skytop appears as a small castle atop the hills near the hotel, but its reality is a bit more mundane: it was constructed as a watchtower for forest fires in the early twentieth century. Though no longer in use, it adds an extra hint of magic to the whole setting. The hotel (off to the left) sits on the water, and the tower touches the sky.
The marine layer rolls in to blanket San Francisco in damp cold during summer evenings. My favorite part of this image is the way the Bay Bridge and the bayside buildings are highlighted by that rolling cloud bank. In just a few minutes more, the whole city was covered.
Behind San Francisco are clouds both natural (horizontal) and the product of human craft (the vertical spiral).
Beautiful San Francisco and its changing, growing skyline are the site of some incredible sunsets. This image from earlier in the spring features a sunset of mostly naturally induced colors, but the fires threatening the Bay Area at the moment are producing a much more intense set of hues.
No offense to Salesforce, but the rainbow sunset reflections off the curved surface of their tower seem to fit much better with a building named “Transbay Tower”—particularly when it sits on the skyline near the Transamerica Pyramid. The darkened and humble shape of Alcatraz in the foreground makes for an appropriate memento mori to San Francisco’s grand architecture.
With the passing of the Solstice, my sabbatical in Berkeley is coming to an end. My softly nostalgia-tinted reminiscences of the Bay Area are now doubly-glazed: the refried beans, twice-baked potatoes, or biscotti of memory. All three options sound delicious.
