Willie and I have been wanting to take the (now popular) San Francisco skyline photo from under the Bay Bridge for a while now. The photo is much much nicer during the holiday time when 17,000 lights outlining the Embarcadero Center buildings are turned on and a bright white light (called The Beacon) is turned on at the Transamerica Building (the triangular building). Willie had been checking the SF webcams and it looked like The Beacon was being lit each night. Last year it had been lit by this time of year so we thought we should be pretty safe in making sure The Beacon would be lit. We left work early and headed out to Treasure Island with plenty of time to find parking, hike up the hill, find "the spot" and then get setup. Unfortunately when US-101 and I-280 merged we hit a HUGE Friday afternoon holiday traffic. We arrived at Treasure Island much much later than planned (almost an hour later), and had to high tail it up the hill and over the Bay Bridge (we were both sweating pretty badly). After hopping the guard rail we actually found the spot pretty easily (just as we were walking over the Bridge a CalTrans truck drove by and screamed over the loud speaker "No photographs from this side of the bridge." We kept walking). We scouted out the area for a while, found our spots and then waited for the light to get nice. When I originally composed this image I wanted to make the SF Cityscape as large as possible, which meant that I clipped off some of the lights on the Bay Bridge. Once it got dark enough I realized that I really did want to include the extra light on the Bridge and I had zoom out and recomposed to get this final composition. Luckily for us there was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL sunset that night, which makes the photo much more interesting. Unfortunately though, as the sun began to set we noticed that the Transamerica Beacon was NOT going to turn on :(. The city lights started to come on, then the 17,000 Embarcadero Center lights were visible but The Beacon stayed a flashing red light. No luck for us. This meant that Willie and I would have to come back at another time, hoping the Beacon would be lit. Our second attempt was made 6 days later, after we both confirmed that The Beacon was lit at 5pm the previous couple of nights. The Beacon was the first light we could see on our 2nd attempt! Unfortunately on the 2nd night the sky was extremely boring and the photo didn't turn out as well as the previous week. I decided to composite the 2 trips and put the lit Beacon on top of the original photo. I hope you enjoy. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 42mm, f/16, 30 sec, ISO 125 No filters, NOT an HDR

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

For the past couple of years my buddy Zack and I have woken up early and driven to San Francisco for sunrise on Christmas morning. Being Jewish and not celebrating Christmas we're both usually away from our family, our friends are with their family, and the city is completely dead, which is perfect for photos. Unfortunately for us we left my apartment a little bit later than planned and got to Pier 14 just as the light was started to get good. I raced to try to setup my camera, figure out the framing, and start snapping away … then realized I wanted some filters and had to race to put on the Lee Filter holder and filters. All in all - I didn't really get a chance to figure out my composition, how many pylons I wanted, which pylons were the best to include, etc. It happened to be low tide (mostly low) so we got a good amount of the pylons showing, and there was enough cloud coverage to provide some color, but it was totally hazy/foggy and made the scene a bit eery. In fact, the light reflections from Oakland didn't come through at all, and I think I didn't get setup in time to capture the light reflections from the bridge. There were a bunch of seagulls flying around the scene too, and you can just make out a seagull on the left-most pylon who happened to sit there for a good majority of the ~6 minute exposure! I'm not in love with this photo but I wanted to make sure to capture something from pier 14 before the America's Cup comes to SF and the renovations remove these classic pylons. This is one of the most photographed spot in SF and it will become a thing of the past soon :( Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 32mm, f/9, 376 sec, ISO 640 Lee Big Stopper + HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad