From Twin Peaks
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is generally slow at work, giving me a chance to do a little photography. This year my wife was out of town visiting her sister so I shot a couple of sunsets in the far away city of San Francisco. OK, maybe it isn’t that far away. I just don’t go there very often!
I met my friend Alejandro Friday night and we started looking for a good vantage point to line up San Francisco’s city hall, nicely lit up for the holidays, with the Transamerica building. We tried a couple of local parks, but it quickly became clear that the best place to get what we wanted was Twin Peaks. This created two problems. The first is that Twin Peaks gets really crowded at sunset so parking would be at a premium. The other is that neither one of us brought a lens long enough to get the shot we envisioned from that distance. We quickly drove back to his house and he grabbed a 100-400mm lens, leaving me to use a 1.4x extender with my 70-200mm lens. We drove back to Twin Peaks and I lucked into a parking spot so we we good to go.
We had a nice but unspectacular sunset and then waited for the city lights to take effect. For me, the best time to take cityscapes is generally about half an hour after sunset, depending on which way you are looking. I want the sky dark enough that the lights take full effect, but not so dark that it looks black in the photos. This was a nice, crisp evening and the buildings came through clearly. The shot below was taken with my 70-200mm lens and the 1.4x extender, giving me a total effective reach of 280mm.
This combination was just long enough to give a nice view in a landscape (horizontal) orientation. The City Hall building cycled between two color schemes every ten seconds, so I needed to keep the exposures shorter than that for crisp colors. What I really wanted, though, was a tight portrait shot of the two buildings. I waited until Alejandro was done and then borrowed his 100-400mm lens along with the extender I was using to give me 560mm of reach. I grabbed the shot I wanted and then he used the same setup for his. Now it was time for a nice steak dinner in the city…
And the Bay Bridge
I was picking my wife up from the airport Saturday evening, so I figured I’d head to another spot on the way that I’d never visited before. I arrived early since it is tricky to get there and made my way to the spot I wanted. As I waited for sunset I relaxed and enjoyed the view while listening to music. My first shot was as the sun set behind the buildings. I waited until it was mostly blocked and used a small aperture (f/18) to get a sun star effect.
The sky wasn’t dark enough for the lights to take effect, but there were some nice clouds and the sun star added some interest. A little while later the colors of sunset were lighting up the sky and I was starting to see the lights from the city. Seemed like a good time to take another shot…
I then waited a little while longer for the lights to fully take effect – this would be the shot I was after. Because I was shooting into the sunset, the sky stayed lighter longer and I didn’t have the darkness I wanted until about an hour after the sun had gone down. I again used a small aperture to create stars from the lights on the bridge. Fortunately there was still some color on the clouds in the sky and an nice orange glow behind the city.
And that wraps up my 2018. When I get some time over the next couple of weeks I’ll write up a summary of my recent trip to the middle east. In the meantime you can find some favorites in the “new releases” section of my portfolio.