Golden Gate Sunrise Photoshoot

Let's get a little more serious about photography. This post will be lengthy and filled with info and techniques. If you make it all the way down to the end, you might be rewarded!

Now that you are up to speed with the Wine Tasting and Pacific Coast Highway segments, it's time for the last part of this first birthday weekend celebration. If you remember, I had high hopes of getting sunset shots of the Golden Gate Bridge but was instead welcomed by dense fog and freezing temperatures. I therefore decided to wake up very early to get sunrise shots.

Chapter A, Part III: Golden Gate Sunrise Shots

This time I decided to do a little more homework to make sure I'd come back with some decent pictures. Ironically, the main issue with the sunset shot was the fog. Not knowing how to predict it, I did some Google research and read that there were slight chances of low fog rolling under the bridge, which would be amazing. All I knew for sure is that it would be cold though!

The other part of the homework is location. I use the app The Photographer's Ephemeris on my iPhone and iPad every time I want to control my framing with the sun or the moon. It is an essential tool for any landscape photographer as the app tells you where the sun and moon will be, anywhere, anytime. I used this app specifically to predict where the Supermoon (May 5th 2012) would rise so I could place it right over downtown Los Angeles.

The sun and moon on May 27th 2013 at the Golden Gate Bridge. More info here.

The app allows you to drop a red pin anywhere on a map. You then select a date, May 27th 2013 in this case, and thick lines are drawn from the red pin showing you where the sun will crawl over the horizon (yellow), where it will set (orange), where the moon will rise (light blue) and where it will hide (dark blue). The thinner lines show you the position of the sun (yellow) and moon (dark blue) at any given time. In this example, I know the sun will rise at 5:51am (yikes). And at 7:08am, from the red pin location, it will be to the right the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge at 13.3 degrees up in the sky.

Using the app, I started looking for a spot where I could get the sun and the bridge in the same composition. Since I didn't have a boat handy, the only land option was at the tip of the stretch of land you see under the red pin (in the picture above). This is Point Diablo Lighthouse. It's nested on a cliff 653ft under the closest road. It's a half mile steep hike through bushes, rocks and cliffs with no trail whatsoever. As a matter of fact, it's said to be only accessible by sea. Since I didn't have a boat handy, again, and I didn't want to die figuring out a way to get down there in the dark, I decided to go to the Battery Spencer spot instead just west of the bridge. I abandoned the idea of having the sun in the frame.

To the dismay of my girlfriend, I slid out of the bed at 4:00am and got on the road. It was overcast and didn't look like the weather would cooperate again. But to my surprise, I arrived at the Golden Gate with no clouds in sight! It was now time to look for a spot and start shooting. I walked passed Battery Spencer and down the cliff a little (I don't recommend this, do it at your own risk) to get an unobstructed view.

The shooting spot, later in the morning.

I setup my tripod and used a 24mm prime for all of the following pictures (fixed lenses make better pictures).

Golden Morning Lights

Golden Gate Bridge Shadows Fine prints available

This was one of the first shots at 5:03am. It's a 30 second exposure at f/5.6 and ISO 100. The long exposure smoothened out the water and enhanced the nifty looking shadows under the bridge. With long exposures, make sure you have a sturdy tripod and use a remote control or the timer on your camera. Pressing the shutter button can create enough camera shake to make a picture blurry.

The colors, contrast and sharpness were very slightly adjusted in Lightroom, but the picture came out of the camera looking almost exactly like this. And by the way, this is the JPEG version. I shot both in RAW and JPEG but ended up with something looking just like this after tweaking the RAW version. Yay for JPEG!

This picture was way before the sun rose so I kept shooting to keep warm, which honestly doesn't really keep you warm...

Soothing Bridge

Soothing Golden Gate Bridge Fine prints available

Eventually the sun passed the horizon but hid behind clouds far northeast. Its shy presence barely colored the sky and none of its rays were hitting the bridge. Three one minute exposures were combined to create this photo (HDR, to get more details in the highlights and shadows). This really smoothens out the water and clouds. Be careful with exposures longer than 30 seconds as you might end up with hot pixels.

Since the sun wasn't playing nice, I decided to experiment a little more.

Purple Sunrise

Golden Gate Bridge Purple Sunrise Fine prints available

I screwed on a Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue polarizer. This particular filter works just like any other polarizing filter but it adds dramatic colors to your picture. As you spin it around, the colors change from gold to blue. This was one of the first times I've played with this filter.

It was an interesting picture to create. I spent a little while spinning the filter around to get the best effect but couldn't quite achieve what I wanted. I took many pictures with the sky colored blue, grey, purple and the waters colored blue, orange or grey. In some of those the sun broke through the clouds and lit the bridge's north tower. I was able to get a shot of the bridge with the tower lit up and the color combination I liked but the little boat under the bridge was almost out of the frame and the sky wasn't as dramatic. Using Photoshop, I copied the sunlit tower from one of the pictures and pasted it into the picture above. The combination of those two pictures, taken just a few seconds apart, creates a much more powerful shot.

That was pretty much the last worthy shot I could get from this shooting spot. By that time, it was 6:31am and the colors were getting duller. It was time to pack and leave.

Bay Sunrise

San Francisco Bay sunrise

On my way out, I snapped this picture of the sunrise. It was taken at 6:43am. Do you remember Point Diablo Lighthouse? At that time, from that red pin location, the sun would have been exactly above the bridge's north tower. Imagine the sky and background above with the Golden Gate Bridge in front! That's what I was aiming for. Maybe I'll rent a boat next time, though mooring at the lighthouse is probably illegal...

Golden Arms

Golden Gate Arms and Clouds Fine prints available

Remember also the different perspective I got from the night before? I took a similar picture of the south tower as I was passing underneath. This picture was snapped with my Fuji X100S, always ready to shoot. It contrasts with the others with it's simplicity and new angle. It also looks like the bridge is trying to hug you with it's lanky red arms.

This chapter concludes Part A of my birthday celebration (here are links to Sonoma Wine Tasting and Driving PCH). Stay tuned for Part B, Chapter I: wakeboarding in Big Bear.

If you made it all the way down here, you deserve the promised reward, a medal or something. Since I ran out of those, I'll give you a special discount valid only for exceptional readers like you. Use the code awesomereader for %30 off any order in my portfolio!

Thank you for reading.

Pacific Coast Highway - Sonoma County

You've read about the first part of our trip in Sonoma where I did more wine tasting than photography. Here is the continuation of this trip. Once I freed my hand from the wine glass, I was able to manipulate the camera a little more.

Chapter A, Part II: Driving PCH to San Francisco

We woke up from a good night sleep in our Sonoma mansion and we headed west for the coast. Bound by time constraints, we drove straight from Santa Rosa to San Francisco, stopping only for a quick picnic at Duncan's Cove and a few oysters later down the road. I was hoping to get sunset pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge so we had to make sure we arrived there around 6pm.

Duncan's Cove

After eating leftovers at Duncan's Cove, I walked around to take a few shots. It was a bright yet gloomy day so I used a 10-stop ND filter to slow the exposure down to 30 seconds. This smoothen the waves as they are licking the beach. The grey colors in the sky didn't add anything to the pictures so I changed them all to black and white, much like many pictures during my Los Angeles Stroll. Before we headed out, I ran down to the water to make some of those rocky cloudy looking pictures.

Duncan's Cove water clouds

The method for this picture is very similar to the one used previously. The main difference was that I had to set my tripod atop a big rock. When you set your tripod in the sand, the legs aren't as stable. This is especially true when the water comes all the way to your tripod and makes the legs sink in the sand as your picture is being taken. The other advantage of the large rock was that it gave me a higher view point. With this particular shot, being too low wouldn't have shown the rocks and water as well.

After messing around for a bit, it was time to continue our drive south. We stopped in Tomales Bay for Jenna to eat a few oysters at The Marshall Store and once again in the charming city of Bolinas for delicious smoothies at Bobolicious (I sense a pattern).

We finally arrived at the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge where I had hoped for epic sunset shots. And lo and behold, the bridge welcomed us with its usual greatness: freezing cold winds and dense fog.

I see some sun hitting the bridge!

The weather didn't seem like it would budge. I decided against losing my fingers to frostbite so we headed in town for some (more) food: late night Kingdom of Dumpling. We highly recommend this hole in the wall place that has excellent dumplings and much variety. Don't be fooled by the pictures on their menu page (seriously, they are all the same picture...).

Of course on the way to the restaurant, we got stuck in Golden traffic.

Different Golden Gate perspective

I was able to snap this picture of a different perspective. Always look for different angles of what you are shooting. I wasn't necessarily planning this shot but I did have my camera ready and I'm happy I did.

The sunset might not have been what I was hoping for, but I didn't abandon the idea of a good Golden Gate picture nonetheless. That same night I decided to do a little more homework and figure out how to maximize my chances of getting good shots of the bridge at sunrise.

The next: much more photo info, including better pictures, in Chapter A, Part III of the birthday weekend extravaganza.

Sonoma Wine Tasting

After a while without writing, I'm back to this page. The past few weeks have been filled with moving boxes around and celebrating my birthday over several weekends. Lucky me, I know.

The first weekend celebration was a delightful trip up to Sonoma and San Francisco with my favorite one, Jenna. The second weekend was spent with a larger group of friends in a house on Big Bear lake where we also celebrated Laura's MBA graduation. Here is the first part of this great birthday experience.

Chapter A, Part I: Sonoma Wine Tasting

We left Los Angeles early afternoon on Friday and headed north. We arrived late at night in Santa Rosa where Jenna had found a room in someone's house using Airbnb. We strongly recommend this website if you want to find good deals for staying in unique rooms, lodges, boats, teepees and even tree houses! The room we stayed in was in a beautiful mansion. Barbara, the owner who lives on the property, was very resourceful about where to go, where to eat and what to do around her city. She is also a great host and your stay there will be amazing. She usually only rents one room but this time, she opened up an additional one for another couple, Keely and Paul. After sharing some late night wine, we decided that we'd start our Sonoma visit together the next morning.

Keely had already spent much time in Sonoma and therefore was our guide. She brought us to this great little winery, Lambert Bridge on the hills of Healdsburg.

Lambert Bridge Winery

Though pricy for its tastings, the wines there were good and the winery itself was gorgeous. But let's be honest here, the star of the show was their fluffy 160lb St. Bernard, Princess Bernadette.

Princess Bernadette, the St. Bernard dog hard at work guarding the Lambert Bridge Winery

After the tasting, we headed to the Ferrari-Carano Winery where the establishment is more interesting than the wines it produces. They weren't as memorable and the staff didn't seem connected to their product.

The wine tasting team at Ferrari-Carano: myself, Jenna, Keely and Paul

The winery itself though, and its gardens, are worth a stop. I was too busy tasting so you'll have to see for yourself what I mean when you visit.

Flowers at Ferrari-Carano

Once our wine thirst was taken care of, we had to satisfy our bellies. We ate at the Diavola Pizzeria, which was very highly recommended and well reviewed though our experience there was quite different. Our food took about an hour to come even though the restaurant was fairly empty when we ordered. The lunch break ended up lasting almost two hours, which is very frustrating when you want to maximize your winery visits in the day. And the food wasn't that memorable. We might have been unlucky but I discourage anyone from going there (no real effort was made to make us understand the situation or give us a better customer experience).

After the disappointing meal, we left Keely and Paul and stopped by the Geyser Peak Winery for a few more tastings. The wines there were pretty good, nothing too exciting.

It was getting late and there were still a couple things we hadn't checked off the list yet: bicycle riding and playing pétanque. The staff at Geyser Peak Winery told us where we might be able to play the game so we headed there.  We parked about a mile away from Michel-Schlumberger winery and jumped on our bikes.

Riding our bicycles through the vineyards

Unfortunately the winery got rid of the pétanque field a couple years before so we were stuck with the difficult task of more wine tasting. The wines at Michel-Schlumberger were pretty good, nothing too impressive either. We were probably biased though since we couldn't play pétanque.

Wine tasting at Michel-Schlumberger Winery

This was our last winery stop for the day and we headed back to clean up for our dinner in Sonoma. Even though our first choice, The Girl And The Fig was booked way before we decided to do our trip (which was just a few days prior to the said trip), Jenna found an amazing backup plan. She had made reservation to Harvest Moon Cafe where we had a wonderful meal and tasted the best lamb plate we've ever had. After a great dinner and a little walk around the Sonoma square, we headed back to our room in Santa Rosa for the rest of the night.

In the morning, we would leave for the coast to drive south toward San Francisco for Chapter A, Part II of our little adventure.

Back to the future

While you guys wait patiently for me to get back to my blogging (I just plugged my computer in 20 minutes ago), you should check out this little photo project.
The photographer goes around and recreates old pictures of people almost perfectly. The story of how she got there and how her project went viral is also very interesting. Do whatever drives you, don't let anything stop you from following your dreams.

M.I.A.

It might look like I've been neglecting my blog. It's not by choice.

Because of my career change and a couple upcoming (big) projects, I have to move out of my place. Packing and getting rid of stuff is more time consuming than one would think!

I've also been out of town over the past few weekends and this coming weekend is no exception. This past one, we went up to Sonoma and San Francisco to celebrate my birthday. Pictures to come but here's an appetizer.

Tasting the Michel-Schlumberger wines

Most of the Sonoma trip was focused on tasting and enjoying my early birthday.

San Francisco was a little more about photography. To get the following shot, I woke up at 4am to go freeze my fingers while standing on the side of a steep cliff. Surprisingly, fog didn't show up to cover parts of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's too bad as it would've given the shot a little more interest. But for an unplanned last minute shoot, it's definitely not bad! This is a simple 30 second exposure to smoothen the waters and erase any car driving over the bridge.

Golden Gate Bridge Shadows Fine prints available

I will upload the rest of the pictures and write about the weekend once I'm settled in my new place. In the meantime, check out this French video of a guy testing the durability and resistance of a Nikon D3s. This video shows you why professional photographers pay extra $ for higher-end cameras. It's not about the pixels!

Camera-sensitive-souls need not apply.

Dentist Inspiration

I went to my dentist appointment in Downtown Los Angeles on Monday and was pleasantly surprised that they offered valet parking all day long. So I headed there early and just walked around snapping some pictures of the city before my appointment. This is what my dentist indirectly inspired.

Layer cake Fine prints available

10:00am is not the best time for interesting light but it doesn't mean you can't get any shots. I knew that the colors would come out dull and that I'd probably convert most of the shots to black and white. This allowed me to focus more on basic shapes just like that layered cake above. This structure is the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power building. It is known for its beautifully lit fountains and 1,250,000 gallons of water held in the reflecting pool that surrounds the DWP headquarters, which I think is somewhat ironic.

Building reflections Fine prints available

The nice thing about downtown LA is that you can just look in any direction and find some inspiration. It's best to have time on your hands of course. I felt rushed as I wanted to get all the way to the DWP building and back before my dentist torture. Just slow down a little and you can always find details, like this building checking itself out in the mirror.

Lonely bench in the street Fine prints available

Some subjects are worth keeping in colors. The contrast between the bright pink bench and the gray ground was interesting. I had to hold the camera way up over my head and guesstimate the framing to compose this one. I wanted the bench in the corner and to eliminate any distraction from the background such as stairs with people walking around. Those benches are located in Grand Park.

Lonely bench in the park Fine prints available

The same idea was applied to this bench in the park a little futher down.

Stairway to not much Fine prints available

As you walk down Hill St, you come accross some apartment structures. With this shot, the idea was to get an angle that would show repetitive patterns and hide distracting details. This picture contrasts the complexity of the building facade with the simplicity of the parking stairway.

Construction umbilical cord Fine prints available

Interestingly enough, I was really hoping to get a color shot out of this picture of the worker. The surface he is walking on was dark brown/orange, he was dressed in super bright neon yellow and orange and the hose going around was bright blue. I framed the shot to try to get as much brown surface as possible but cutting everything else out since it was distracting. It turns out the colors weren't quite what I expected them to be. I converted the picture to black and white where Lightroom offers good control over the influence of colors. I darkened everything but the blue pipe and the worker. This was shot right next to the Disney Concert Hall.

All the pictures were taken in Auto mode (Program mode) on my Fuji X100S. The fixed lens of the camera boosted creativity and simplified the picture taking process. I didn't have to fiddle around changing lenses, carry a huge and heavy DSLR or figure out what all the buttons do. Heck, on a simple blog post like this, most of those pictures would have looked very similar whether you used the latest Canon/Nikon or your iPhone.

Bottom line is don't worry too much about having the latest lens, just go out and shoot. Oh and get your teeth checked every 6 months!

On a side not, have you ever tried conversing with a dentist... while the dentist and their assistant shove all sorts of torture instruments in your mouth? Well technically, I wasn't trying to converse but the dentist was. Try responding with your mouth wide open, a drill on a tooth and a vacuum cleaner sucking any moisture in there. Now don't complain about your hairdresser wanting to exchange a few words!

Recycling

You remember that hiking trip you made a couple years ago? The one where you took a bazillion pictures that are stored deep somewhere in your computer, just waiting for a hard drive failure to happen (you should back-up your stuff by the way, but that's not the subject of this post).

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake Fine prints available

Well I did and I went back and looked through the pictures I took when Gabe and I hiked up to Chickenfoot Lake (it actually looks like a chickenfoot...) up in the Sierra Mountains, around Mammoth Lakes.

Gabe the Sierra hiker

While I wait for my next hike opportunity, I figured I'd look through and see if I can bring a little more out of some of the pictures I took on that trip. I had a few good ones in there, nothing too exceptional. This trip was almost exactly a year ago and my skills weren't as good as they are today (I still have lots and lots to learn!).

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake Fine prints available

Some of those pictures used to be in my portfolio but after a recent review, I didn't like them as much anymore. They were processed through Apple Aperture which is a great photo editing software to start with. I opened a few of them in Adobe Lightroom and started playing with them. I haven't been using Lightroom for very long but what a great tool! I was able to pull out a lot more out of the pictures than with Aperture. Here is an example:

Apple Aperture

That's about as much as I could with with Aperture at the time (I'm sure it could be better).

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake

Adobe Lightroom

That's what I could get with a few quick edits!

The Sierra Mountains from Chickenfoot Lake Fine prints available

Now that I've experienced that, I've transfered a whole bunch of shots from my Aperture library to the Lightroom library in order to sort and find pictures I could enhance just that little bit. Well I know what I'm going to be doing for the next few days!

A Frenchman in the Sierras