- Here is a view from the other side. www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/417788563...
- The crescent moon moved this much during the 1-minute exposure.
- I made sure to include Coit Tower.
- A 60-story condo tower is hidden behind here, you can see a bit of it in the big version.
- The holiday lights of the Embarcadero Center.
- I made sure to include a view of the Sutro tower through the cross braces. A 1200 ft. tower may block the view soon.
- An excellent baseball park for the San Francisco Giants is located here. You get great views of the city there too.
- F18 made these stars.
- As the tide flowed to the right, towards the sea, a wake is created behind each tower.
- Only for a few minutes is there a balance between the reflected light and the natural light from the sky. I only got two balanced shots during this evening.
- There up on the tower stands the Gov yelling down: "Hey Paaatreek, it's me...Aaaanold! Tanks fur taking my photograaaaf"! :) - Thomas P Mann
- geometrically perfect! amazing! - laguz1 (busy)
Silicon City - San Francisco
The 50 miles (80km) between San Francisco and San Jose California is known as Silicon Valley, the world's center of high technology, but San Francisco is becoming 'Silicon City', as I'll describe below. This is the Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge is to the right of this view. No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/420449750...
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Settings etc.:
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Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @24
1-minute exposure @F18 (pushing it but it looks fine at full-res)
1-LEE soft ND grad 0.9 (100x150mm) (2 grads with bright lights creates
reflected lights)
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 50
Small Slik tripod with Manfrotto pistol grip ball head
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
Sturdy hiking boots to keep from falling off the hill
(This is to the left of most shots taken here to get the full 2x3
ratio frame!)
I was literally hanging off the cliff to get this perspective.
It is amazing how many high technology companies are located in Silicon Valley.
Apple, NetFlix, Quora, Cisco and Juniper (the backbone of the internet), Google, YouTube, Facebook, Adobe (Photoshop, PDF files), Intuit, Tango, LSI Logic, Symantic, Nvidia, Hewlet Packard, eBay, PayPal, Yahoo, Palm, Intel (in almost every computer), AMD and Applied Materials (the rest of the chips inside nearly all computers), turntable.fm (crack for the head) vmWare (virtual servers), Appcelerator (a great app dev. framework), Y-Combinator (The birthplace of numerous startups), Mozilla (Firefox browesr), Pandora (Internet radio in Oakland), Sun Microsystems, SmugMug photo website hosting and sharing, LinkedIn (the biggest corporate social networking site),Oracle (#1 database company), monster.com, Bloom Energy, Tesla Motors, Genentech, and many more.
But San Francisco is home to hundreds of high-tech startups and and better known companies such as Flickr, Twitter, SalesForce (cloud computing) Wikimedia (wikipedia), Zynga (80 million users play farmville etc.), UStream, Metacafe, DropBox, RapLeaf, Blurb (photo books), Dolby Labs, Stumbleupon, Digg (THE way to go viral on the internet until Reddit (Also in SF) came along), Craigslist (the biggest want-ad website with local versions around the world), Yelp (recommendations on restaurants and other things, soon worldwide), Autodesk, (the leading computer design software company), Typekit, QuantCast (Web analytics), Twilio, Square(mobile payments), GitHub, Riverbed,Heroku (cloud computing/online customer database systems), Second-life (the biggest online virtual reality game played by over 800,000 people around the world). And let's not forget Wired Magazine....etc...etc..
Genentech, Lucasfilm and Pixar are also within a few miles of where I took this shot.
There is an energetic feel to this place that is hard to describe, but perhaps a view from this spot is the best way to show it in a photograph.
Okay, this really is the last upload of the year. So I hope you have a great holiday season. I have some nice seascapes from my Big Sur summit meetup with Ivan Makarov to start off the new year.
The map shows exactly where this is. It is another place not for the faint of heart!
See my Flickr profile for a link to my newly designed website.
Resources:
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your
fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries
have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
.
Comments and faves
McDeez, A Sutanto, Jim Patterson Photography, Thunderbolt_TW, and 1364 other people added this photo to their favorites.
A Sutanto (30 months ago | reply)
This is excellent.
Jim Patterson Photography (30 months ago | reply)
Nice light here Patrick and sorry I missed out on Big Sur...I was already on the road to SF after having shot Berry Creek Falls in Big Basin. I have similar shots to this with the 2x3 ratio, but at night. I like this time of day better, so kudos for braving the daylight "excursion". I think I'm addicted to this place and this view, I want to go back already! :)
Have a safe and happy holidays and maybe we can meet up in SoCal.
--
Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
alan guido (30 months ago | reply)
awesome capture
Talke Photography (30 months ago | reply)
wonderful shot!!!
Thunderbolt_TW (30 months ago | reply)
awesome exposure!!!!1
Rich Capture (30 months ago | reply)
Great shot you got here. That's the beauty of flickr, ever since Steve scoped this place out a few months back, everyone will soon have a shot from this spot, including myself :-) Great job, going wide to the left. It definitely opens up the shot a lot. Thanks for the idea :-)
Alex Jewkes (30 months ago | reply)
wow, amazing picture. i wish i could go to america..
Jay Tankersley Photography (30 months ago | reply)
outstanding job. i really like this perspective.
David Belo (30 months ago | reply)
Fabulous angle!
ricsamanion (30 months ago | reply)
awesome!!
laguz1 (busy) (30 months ago | reply)
phenom photo!
Marco Siguenza (30 months ago | reply)
amazing!
Francisco Aragão (30 months ago | reply)
Beautiful composition ...
SewerDoc (30 months ago | reply)
Lovely image and interesting information that went along with it.
you have been invited to join
!!★ High Quality Image ★
Qualified Member's Only
invited with SICI (2009-09-12)
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Seen on darckr.com ( ?² )
romacz (30 months ago | reply)
I really admire your photography and the effort you put into it! Extremely great job! Congratulations!
Chaos2k (30 months ago | reply)
beautiful shot
Fionn Luk (30 months ago | reply)
Wow this is a beautiful image. Great capture of the bridge and the city in the background. Great lighting
tropicaLiving - Jessy Eykendorp (30 months ago | reply)
perfect slow shutter make the bridge and the city look like it's on an ice floor, the lightings are brilliant..excellent work Patrick!
Happy holiday and Christmas~!
sharaff (30 months ago | reply)
everytime i come here i learn from you Patric. Greetings from Maldives.
Matt Granz Photography (30 months ago | reply)
I've seen this bridge somewhere before…. man, you got a great shot!
digitalgopher (30 months ago | reply)
excellent, indeed
Dustin Prickett (.sunglow.) (30 months ago | reply)
mesmerizing beauty
Gustavo (Sin tiempo para nada) (30 months ago | reply)
Impresionante.
Me gustó mucho la descripción del equipo y método de la toma.
Felicitaciones por una toma excepcional y Felices Fiestas!
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Seen on your photo stream. ( ?² )
Robin Black Photography (30 months ago | reply)
The starred lights really give this a lovely, almost whimsical touch. Beautiful!
ツMaaar (30 months ago | reply)
excellent !
have a great holiday Patrick !!!!
maxxsmart (30 months ago | reply)
Every image of yours always shows the extra steps you take to make them that much better.... This here is by far the best I've seen, even better than the one you made back in 2005 from down on the beach. Have a great holiday!
jimmyskinnie (30 months ago | reply)
Beautiful!
Diego Tabango (30 months ago | reply)
lovely work patrick.
Ah Hman (30 months ago | reply)
very cool work!
Ivan Sohrakoff (30 months ago | reply)
Great shot Patrick. So, I'm assuming from all the comments that this area is illegal or off-limits to trespass, right? I want to head over there and shoot, but it is about an hour and fifteen minutes from here and I want to know what I'm getting into! I wanted to shoot here after seeing Maxxsmart and Jim's shots, and now this -you guys are killing me!
tzargregory (30 months ago | reply)
Wow Patrick - you're ona roll!
1D-Photography (30 months ago | reply)
Nice Shot!!
PatrickSmithPhotography (30 months ago | reply)
Thanks for your comments! Happy holidays to everyone.
Ivan, I'm not sure if it is illegal but definitely DO NOT go near the Coast Guard base!
Patrick
Sayran (30 months ago | reply)
Perfect composition and exposure, wishing you happy holidays. Lauren
Ivan Makarov (30 months ago | reply)
There it is, the view I already seen last night. It looks even better on a big screen, of course.
Interesting to see how quick that new moon is seen from different places. In my shot of the skyline, which is taken just three minutes later, the moon is showing up close to Transamerica building. In yours it's way above the bridge.
It also appears you should adjust your camera clock back to standard time instead of daylight savings.
PatrickSmithPhotography (30 months ago | reply)
True Ivan, my clock is probably off by an hour. I never really look at it actually!
Patrick
KelseyHazlewood (30 months ago | reply)
You forgot about WIRED magazine! We're the ones who cover all the tech businesses ;)
.Derrick:) (30 months ago | reply)
Lovely shot. It's interesting to see that how you all inspire each other, having seen some similar shots posted recently from others. All good fun. Congrats on the shot it's beautiful.
AGrinberg (30 months ago | reply)
Outstanding...
When you mention Silicon City I can't help but think of the Broadway strip a few decades ago (and even now). Carol Doda is a San Francisco classic!
RichardDemingPhotography (30 months ago | reply)
Speechless....this is truly PHENOMENAL...~!
Brandon Page (30 months ago | reply)
Home sweet home.
Phil Gibbs (30 months ago | reply)
The detail here is scary good. Amazing work!
I invite you to visit my photostream.
Ben's Lens (30 months ago | reply)
absolutely breathtaking Patrick!! Let me know if you ever need a caddy to carry your equipment :-)
Ivan Makarov (30 months ago | reply)
Yes, neither do I, so my clock is always off during the summer time. In fact, I have comment still embedded into every shot EXIF data saying it's 2008 copyright.
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Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
PatrickSmithPhotography (30 months ago | reply)
True, Wired magazine has been around for a while and started right here.
Carol Doda? She would be more appropriate for the Silicone valley, which would be the San Fernando Valley! hehe....
Patrick
goldrooster707 (30 months ago | reply)
The gorgeous colors, best picture shows San Francisco 's Holiday
view. very lovely .
Thanks for share . Happy holidays.!
I M R A N's Photowork (30 months ago | reply)
Awesome take and thanks for sharing tech
Xindaan (30 months ago | reply)
This is beautiful.
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Seen in my contacts' photos. ( ?² )
Steve J O'Brien (30 months ago | reply)
Wonderful thanks for sharing
Mike Groseth (30 months ago | reply)
Flipping awesome!! I love this and thanks for the setup info!!