Just out of the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge lies one of the best things about San Francisco –  wide open spaces that provide the proverbial breath of fresh air.  The fact that one can make the trek over the entrance to one of the most amazing natural harbors in the world, and find peace and quiet amid the hustle and bustle is a godsend to many urbanites.  Thus when a suburbanite gets the hankering, you know it’s a bad case of stir-crazy.

So it was, that I huffed into the hills after all these storms were a brewin’.  Driving up, I kept wanting to pull over and start photographing.  Sometimes having patience is the hardest part.  But remembering a wedding I photographed some months back, I couldn’t help wander back up to such a wonderful spot.  Heck, it was a place where two people, completely in love with each other, bonded for life.  Now that if that’s not beautiful, I don’t know what is.

So here are a few images that drifted by as I held the shutter down.

With the image above, I used 2 Neutral Density Graduated Filters to offset the brightness of the sun.  A .6 and .9 stacked together on top of each other compensated for the bright sun, and hand holding them against the front of the lens, I offset the amount of light by 5 stops ( a ton!).  No HDR here (High Dynamic Range – a blending of three photographs with varying light values).  This was just good old in-camera work being done.

I’ve also just purchased a new program that converts images to Black and White.  Yes, photoshop can do this, but Nik Silver Efex is different.  The company has scanned and profiled many images from different film types, and their program replicates those findings to produce life-like representations on screen that produce quality reproductions in print.

Open the program, upload your photo, and apply an action.  If you loved shooting with Kodak TMax, you can finally go digital, and have your results equal what would have been produced in the darkroom.

Things I wish I had:  Picnic basket filled with figs wrapped in prosciutto, some crackers, and freshly made fruit compote, a big blanket, a bottle of wine, and my wife next to me.

Here’s a few longer exposures of the clouds just moving about.  The colors were just so gorgeous, I just wanted to stop shooting and admire.  Such is life.

A different take on it.

See you down the road.

-Todd