My best images of 2014
It’s this time of the year when you reflect on what happened to you this year? First and foremost I spent two extraordinary weeks in Burma. Seven of my top ten images are from Burma and I could have easily have more. I have started to find that challenging weather environment can result in unique, more interesting images than fair weather. My last three images illustrate this point: a thunderstorm in Burning Man, a very strong dust storm or a foggy evening on the San Francisco Bay.
Visit of Alcatraz and @Large – Ai Weiwei’s new exhibit
Friday evening, my wife and I went to see the exhibit of Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz island. We choose the evening tour because it let us combine the exhibit and an a photoshoot of the city with the Christmas light from Alcatraz. The tour boat left at 3:20pm with plenty of time for looking at the exhibit before the sunset at 4:51pm. December is the best month to go to Alcatraz to photograph the city’s christmas lights. It’s a unique vintage point and relatively close. I love doing panorama of the city while there. You need to sign up for an evening tour otherwise you have to leave the island before 5pm. Only evening tour people can stay and take the last boat of the day at 6:40pm. One of the side benefit of seeing the @Large exhibit is the fact that it is...
August supermoon in San Francisco
Sunday night’s supermoon was the brightest and closest to Earth in 20 years. It was 14% bigger and about 30% brighter than usual. I did my usual research about possible locations in the week leading to the Full Moon. I found one promising location but Saturday was an extremely foggy day here in the San Francisco Bay. I had made up my mind that it was not worth going, until late Sunday afternoon, when a friend of mine sent me this text: “Moon shoot tonight?”. He lives in San Francisco so he had direct information that our friend Karl (see Karl the fog) was not coming over. I drove quickly (but safely) to San Francisco to meet my friend and we went to my planned location. I knew I would not see when the Moon exactly rises over the horizon because of...
Happy 4h of July!
Today is independence day and one fun thing to do on that day, beside pool parties and BBQs, is the fireworks show. I have heard that the shows at Disneyland, South Lake Tahoe and Ala Moana Beach Park are among the best. While waiting for the fireworks to start, I leave you with a couple images from the New Year’s fireworks (above) and from the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate bridge. If you want to know where to go in San Francisco for the fireworks (and where the top image was taken from), read this post. Be careful, the 4th of July fireworks is best viewed from Pier...
Full moon over the Golden Gate bridge
Last night, it was going to be full and to rise above the North tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. After looking at the moon position, I did conclude that the moon would be aligned with the top of the tower with the Transamerica tower in the middle of the opening. The image above shows what my vision was. A very unusual hot weather is in effect in San Francisco right now, which meant that it was still in 70s at 9pm last night and there was no chance of fog and clouds to block the view of the moon. The combination of those factors had attracted a large number of photographers on the Marin Headlands, literally I was waiting for moonrise with 12 other photographers. Taking pictures of the moon is a bit tricky. First the moon moves quickly in the sky. Second there is a...