Low-light photography is the other reason, besides defocused backgrounds, for paying extra for fast lenses. So, taking advantage of that, I walked around Union Square and Market Street on Saturday night shooting with an f/1.7 lens wide open. This busker at the edge of Union Square was singing songs from the Great American Songbook ("Cheek [...]
After the storms of the past week, Sunday was clear and cool in San Francisco. I walked all over the place—Union Square, the Embarcadero, Chinatown, North Beach and the financial district—with a street photography mindset. I got four images I think are worth showing. I came across these two men on Market St. They each [...]
The streets in Chinatown in San Francisco are crowded during the Flower Fair, which takes place the weekend before Chinese New Year. That makes it hard to get a clean composition. I got only a few semi-keepers from a couple of hundred photos, and even for those, I thought there was too much going on [...]
I walked around downtown San Francisco on Sunday in beautiful weather and photographed not people (well, very few people) but buildings. It's not an original observation, but monochrome works especially well for architecture. And in post, I can easily turn skies almost black, which gives the images with light or white buildings a lot of [...]
I went into San Francisco about a half hour before sunset last Saturday night. I took some photos—none of them good—from ground level in Union Square, then took the elevator to the fifth floor of the Macy's building to get this elevated perspective. This is a three-shot pano with a 28mm lens. I knew about [...]
I went into San Francisco yesterday with a vague idea of what I wanted to shoot. I knew I wanted to arrive early at Mission Dolores because it's a white building that would be front-lit and would stand out in black and white against the dark sky. Beyond that, I thought I'd walk into the [...]
The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park is apparently just behind the Golden Gate Bridge among San Francisco's most-photographed structures. It's definitely a picturesque building in a beautiful park setting—and a great subject when you're shooting with a black and white camera. I got there just after sunrise on a Sunday, when there were [...]
I was walking at the Presidio on Tuesday and came across this rarely seen animal, a Northern Short-Eared Rugrat. They are habituated to humans, so I was able to creep up close and get this shot. For me, the lighting, expression, pose and setting all work in this image. I'll keep an eye out for [...]
There are a few million photographs of it in color, so I chose to shoot it with my monochrome camera. The light was favorable for long-exposure black and white photography. But that wasn't exactly unexpected—San Francisco in the summer at 8 a.m. is usually overcast. This is a 25-second exposure with a subtle selenium tint. [...]
It's easier to photograph people at events than elsewhere, and it's especially easy at Comic Con, where many people are dressed in costume and are happy to pose. I went to San Francisco Comic Con (held in Oakland) on Friday, stationed myself in front of a black curtain to use as a background, and asked [...]