San Francisco Late Night

Here's another interpretation of this scene. Not entirely sure what I did here, but I kind of like it. In the full version of this image, i.e. not compressed to a 72 dpi jpg, you can even see stars. I fiddled around with the image, tweeking color, contrast, fill light, lights, darks, shadows etc until I hit this surreal mood and stopped.

Saturday night on my way back from Sacramento, I stopped on Treasure Island which is the island in the middle of the Bay between Oakland and San Francisco. It’s a bit of an adventure to get to during the day as it is a left exit off the middle of The Bay Bridge. But at night it is pretty easy so long as you remember the sharp turn in the exit and don’t plow into the Jersey barriers. You then wind your way down the rocky tree covered hills to the old Navy base at the bottom which faces downtown San Francisco.

There I set up my tripod and started shooting.

I met a guy from the Czech Republic, and like all insane shooters at 11:30 PM on a Saturday night, we struck up a conversation and shared ideas and experiences.

When I finished, I headed over to Cressy Field in the Presidio, the closed Army base which is now a park, on the other side of town and shot views of the Golden Gate. Now you have to recall this is the city of the Zodiac Killer, who was never caught, to appreciate how I felt being down there at 1:00 in the morning all by myself. What we do in the name of our “art.” And I don’t even drink.

Well, it was fun and kind of thrilling.