All images © 2007-2013 Aaron Meyers
Christmas time in SF means a couple special things for us photographers: The Beacon is lit atop the Transamerica Building and 17,000 lights outline the four Embarcadero Center buildings. Because of this I had 2 shots I really wanted to take: 1) the SF skyline from Treasure Island, under the bay bridge (see previous photo), and 2) "Thread the Needle" -- the Transamerica Beacon taken through the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. Having already shot the skyline from Treasure Island I needed to go back and get The Beacon in the GGB. I convinced my friend Zack to leave work and drive up to SF with me. Luckily the traffic was pretty light and we made it to Marin in plenty of time to setup and wait for the blue hour. Zack's D70x wasn't really working so I leant him my D300s while I used the D700. Having been here before I knew that I really wanted ~300mm on a DX body so I was going to have to hope that my 70-300mm lens on the D700 would be good enough and I could just crop it. Unfortunately, the 70-300mm is not exactly the best lens, produces ugly lightstars and didn't take very good pictures. Just as blue hour (or the 5 minutes of it) hit, I asked Zack to switch lenses and borrowed his 80-200 f/2.8 lens, which was MUCH better. I tried numerous different compositions, and I even have the typical close crop of this but ultimately I liked including the bridge in this photo. I think it shows more of the scene and puts a little more focus on San Francisco as opposed to a tighter cropping focusing on the beacon. We call this "threading the needle" because the Beacon, which looks like a needle, fits perfectly in the north tower of the GGB. Note that the photo may looks like it's not properly leveled because the bridge appears to go up in the photo … I assure you that this photo is actually level (and I even double checked before/after I took the photo), it's just an illusion due to the angle the photo was taken. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF 155mm, f/11, ISO 250, 30 sec, Tripod
Last week my buddy and I grabbed our cameras, left work a bit early, and drove up to the Marin Headlands to take photos at Rodeo Beach. We knew these rock pillars were here and had seen some great photos of it and wanted to make our go. I've posted a couple other photos from this photoshoot but several of my friends really liked this photo so I had to throw this one up too! As soon as I threw on the my circular polarizer and the Graduated Filters the sky LIT UP! It was like an explosion of color! These photos are NOT HDR and have had very little saturation edits (in fact, I had to lower the saturation a bit so that you wouldn't think it was fake)! The clouds kept the sun hidden so I didn't have any clipping from a bright sun. The soft graduated filters worked great -- gave me some great color in the sky and let me slow the shutter for some neat wave movements. I'm quite pleased with how these came out! I've found that the motion of the outgoing wave makes for much nicer photos. I found a nice spot along the beach that wasn't getting too wet and used the rocks to create a line through the photo. I then used the fleeting water to create another line, away from it … trying to draw your eye in and to the right, then back and to the left. The awesome reflection of the sunset off the sand/water made this photo even nicer. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/8, 8 sec, ISO 125, Tripod B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer + Hitech 0.9 soft Reverse ND grad filter, Hitech 0.6 soft ND grad filter, and Lee FK Filter holder NO HDR. Decreased saturation in some areas (sky), added sharpening and some dodge/burning.
There's a somewhat unwritten rule pertaining to fog at the Golden Gate Bridge that low fog never occurs two days in a row. Well, never say "never"! Almost every day for a week I woke up at 5am to check the fog and either go back to bed or drive up to San Francisco. This particular morning was the second one in a row that I hopped in the car and met Alan in San Francisco. The previous morning I witnessed a much lower fog from Hawk Hill. On this morning, by the time I crossed the bridge, Alan had already warned me that the fog was both a bit high and also really nice. I parked my car, still immersed in fog, threw on a number of layers of warm clothes, and began the huff up the half mile hike to the top of Slacker Hill. It was interesting to watch the fog disappear and the temperature rise about 15° as I walked. Off came the layers. The fog rose and fell slightly as the sun rose but it stayed near the tops of the two Golden Gate Bridge towers. It was slightly higher than I would have liked but the clouds in the sky kept my hopes up for a beautiful morning. Sure enough, Mama Nature did not disappoint. At twilight the clouds began to glow pink and orange and as the sun got higher in the sky the clouds bursted with pink and red color. I came home with so many photos I was happy with that I didn't even know where to begin! I chose this photo from earlier in the morning because of a couple of reasons: First, the glow in the fog was still fairly prominent. This was also about as low as the fog got and you can get a bigger glimpse of the two bridge towers and the city hiding in the background. Some color had started streaking into the sky but a couple of stars can still be seen in the upper right. A car and a biker made their way up Conzelman Rd as my shutter remained open for this 20 second exposure. It was a beautiful morning spent with Alan Chan, Jared Ropelato, Joe Azure, Jim Patterson, John Harrison and a number of other photographers. The saddest part of the morning
