Under the Bridge

Golden Gate BridgeOkay, so really, it is above the bridge, or in front of it, but you get the picture… er, I mean the point. I figured I started with a RHCP tune for a title, so I might as well end with one, even if I don’t really like this one that much.

Anyhoo, I have finally completed posting the rest of my *good* photos from the San Francisco area trip. I could add more in the future, but I really need to plow thru the rest and determine if any gems were missed or, if I can make any more into gems via Photoshop.

I added photos to two sets I created last time out and describe in my previous post. The photos I took during my last two nights by the bridge were added to the Golden Gate Bridge 2006 set. Within the set, Monday night’s photos start here and Tuesday’s start here.

These are much better than the first night’s set since I spent more time to get the settings right. I also did a good amount of time trying to get different exposures of the same framing, so as to learn more about what works for different lighting conditions. In some cases, I included these different examples and maybe you could comment which one worked better in your opinion. I tried to label them as such with the description on Flickr.

As usual, it was pretty windy up close to the bridge, so filtering thru those to find the ones not impacted by wind was a chore. What is neat to see is all the air traffic over the Bay Area. It shows up quite well on the long exposures where you get the streaks of light as the planes take off and land. There’s also the occasional blur of a star or a ferry moving about the bay. In some cases I feel like these add to the photo and in some cases, I wish they weren’t there. Perhaps I can Photoshop those out when I feel up to it.

The CanneryI finished up with work fairly early in the afternoon on Tuesday, so I killed some time around the waterfront before heading out to the Headlands. I took some shots around the area and added them to the San Francisco 2006 photo set I created last time out. The new photos start here with one of a vintage trolley. There’s even one of the In-N-Out Burger that has been talked about in the comments of some other posts.

As far as Flickr goes, I upload all my photos with the Flickr Uploadr tool. With my new camera taking such large file sized photos, I now have the tool set to resize the photos down to a more manageable size for upload and viewing on the web. Unfortunately, it appears some of the quality is lost as the tool does this, so they don’t always look as good as the originals. However, I do encourage you to click on each photo’s “All Sizes” button and look at larger sizes. Many of the details of some of these photos are lost if you don’t look at them big!

I may have already mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning again that I used Flickr’s new Map feature to map where I took each photo. There’s a Map link on the photo page if it has been mapped, so if you want to see where I took one, zoom in and check it out. Maybe you can get a better shot when you visit!

Finally, if anyone would like a print from an original, let me know via e-mail. I can send you the file and you can do with it what you will. The large sized originals also make for an awesome desktop background. I am currently using this one of the Bay Bridge. It’s a gentle reminder to be careful about wandering foreign cities at night by yourself… šŸ˜‰