A Beautiful Sunset in San Francisco

Today i went out to Japan Town, in hope of catching the sunset, since it was quite a sunny day, with on and off clouds. Not only was the sunset a bright glowing red, but the astrostratus clouds mixed with the sunset was breathtaking. I used a polarizing filter for this, to spice up the clouds a little bit and add a couple (2.3 exactly) stops to my picture, so that i could have a slower exposure time to get the traffic motion blur.generally when shooting sunsets i would recommend a graduated neutral density filter, so that you can have a dark, rich and colorful sunset sky, while the bottom half of the picture, whatever it may be gets properly exposed, instead of over exposed.

This picture was taken in japan town on at Geary blvd & fillmore at this overpass walkway, looking down Geary blvd, away from downtown.

 

Exposure time: .08 sec

f-stop: 3.8 (5.2 with polarizing filter)

ISO: 200

Filters: Polarizing filter (adds 2.3 stops)

In spite of the world series victory and the sunny day today!

Congratulations Giants on the world series victory!
downtown SF was absolutely insane the night of the victory. the streets were filled with horns honking people yelling, cars burning out, gridlock, drinking and much more.

 

And in spite of this beautiful sunny day this is a photo from the Richmond district on 46th between Anza and Balboa.

This is an HDR (high dynamic Range) where I combined 3 photos all the same, just taken at different exposures (1 properly exposed, one under exposed by a couple stops and one over exposed by a couple stops) and with those 3 photos i use Photomatix Pro to make the HDR. It is a bit pricy, if your paying for it I believe it's $99. Photoshop CS5 and an array of other software will make an HDR, but from reviews and personal experience I have found Photomatix Pro to be the most user friendly and best of all the HDR software

For this photo my settings were:

Exposure time: 1/2000 sec
f-stop: 4.5
ISO: 200
Filters - None

Getting Started

So I am starting up this blog, to share my photos along with tips on how i shot them, the locations of all the spots and how to get there. This blog i have decided will be strictly photography from the beautiful San Francisco, and about 95% of them will be long exposures, (so taken during the night time)

enjoy!


you may contact me at: scotch59@gmail.com

This photo was taken about 2 years ago, at the embarcadero, over by Arcane lounge and Rincon Park (the place with the big arrow in the ground)

exposure time - 2 seconds
Fstop - f4
ISO - 400
filters - None