Dave Morrow Photography: Wires - San Francisco, California

Monday, December 9, 2013

Wires - San Francisco, California

I play this game once in a while when scouting for new spots to shoot that involves finding random pictures that I like then trying to pin down the exact location where they were taken. Obviously this isn't very hard if you've been to the city or location before, but it becomes much more interesting when the location you're looking for is on the other side of the world. There are obviously lots of clue like time, day, location of the sun, moon or stars, along with other man made clues that you may see in the image. Using Google Maps / World makes this task infinity easier, but at times I think I nailed the location, then show up to the actually spot where I though the picture was snapped and find it to be way off.

That scenario was just the case when trying to nail down the spot in the picture below. I had everything mapped out, but on arrival found there were a bunch of different locations within that same area in which to shoot. Needless to say, it always pays off to arrive an hour+ before sunrise or sunset to do some scouting. I always pack a few beers and a book just in case:)
Just after sunset in San Francisco / / Nexus 5

The Shot 
After a long night of shooting Milky Way / star trails in Big Sur, we decided it was a good idea to drive through the night and catch sunrise over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. We arrived around 4 AM to get some nice night / blue hour scenes with the moon rising over the bridge. Once the sun started to rise it became apparent that this was going to be an amazing morning. The fog level on the bay was near perfect, and over the next 2 hours I captured some of my favorite shots from the trip. I really wanted to grab some lesser known compositions so I pushed myself to do so through out the morning, grabbing an "iconic" shot here and there for good measure.
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