I hit a couple of classic locations for photographing the Golden Gate Bridge during late October. The first site was at Marshall's Beach. I departed for the beach at 2 AM from a hotel in Petaluma, and encountered a series of sketchy experiences, starting with running over a large object on the 101 at freeway speeds. That was followed by parking at the Golden Gate Overlook parking lot, which featured a large sign warning of smash and grab activity in the lot. That was on my mind the whole morning. Next, I attempted to down climb a 100 foot sea cliff to get to the beach. I ran into a large drop-off that disappeared into darkness. I decided to turn around and go look for a proper trail...which I did eventually find. I then realized I was in the dark and mountain lions probably occasionally roam this stretch of urban wilderness. Next I reached my photography site on the beach, and had to set up shop on an outcrop of rocks in order to avoid the building high tide. Finally, this site is just a mile or so from the epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which created a funny kind of feeling. Otherwise, I got some great pictures of the bridge as dawn light spread across the Golden Gate terrain passage.
The next photography site I hit was a place called Slacker Ridge//Slacker Hill. It sits high above the Marin Headlands on the north side of the Golden Gate, and has an expansive view of the San Francisco Bay and downtown area. I took a series of images as the sun set, and was particularly happy with images that captured car streaks weaving around the hills below. Finally, I came for sunrise photography at Battery Spencer, which is a point located right next to the bridge, thus providing dramatic up-close photography opportunities. Unfortunately, fog was thickening around the bridge, which would block a view of the rising sun. I thus decided to take a few pictures during the late night, and then head back home to Eureka.
Some of the pictures discussed in this post can be found here.
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