Scott Jones

For the first time in quite a while this photographer actually make some photographs last night. For months now, work for me has been about producing the MotoMatters calendar and our “Fast Things” t-shirt, printing landscape images for display in one of the Northstar at Tahoe shops, and filling orders for the Rossi glowing brakes image, which has been selling nicely since appearing in Road Racer X magazine.

So it was pretty fun to be out in the world again with my camera on a tripod instead of sitting in front of my computer. I hit several spots as the sun was setting, but one place I made a point to investigate was the road up to Hawk Hill above the Golden Gate Bridge. For months that road has been closed for some public works, which turned out to be shoring up the side of the hill with a massive support to prevent further deterioration of the area beneath the winding road. A nice benefit of the work is that the gate which used to be closed by a ranger every evening has been removed, and it looks like we are now free to travel that road around the clock. But the downside is that the new armco barrier that lines the road has made most of the parking spots disappear. There used to be many places you could pull over on your way up or down the hill to look at the changing views of the bridge and the city. Now, finding a safe place to park is quite a challenge.

I ended up hiking several hundred yards to the single spot where one can make the above photograph. And I mean there is a single spot where you can line up the top of the Transamerica building with the top space in the north tower. Two people cannot make this image at the same time if both want the tower centered in the opening. The only leeway is to move down the hill a bit, which changes the elevation of the pyramid in the opening at the risk of ending up hundreds of feet below in the bay.

The city looked fantastic, with the Embarcadero buildings alight and the bright star on the top of the pyramid. Once again, a 700 pixel wide jpeg does not do justice to the full sized image.

I took the opportunity to try out a new bit of hardware, Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit, which allows me to connect my Nikon cameras directly to the iPad and transfer files to the Photo app. The LCD on the back of DSLRs is certainly useful, but it is still difficult to tell what you’ve got in the camera from that small screen. Being able to see your image in nearly real time on the iPad’s much larger, crisper screen is amazingly useful, and I can’t image ever working in the field without the iPad from now on. It’s not practical for use at the track, but for landscape work it’s invaluable.

Some time after leaving the above spot I noticed a mild irritation on my left hip, as if I’d somehow scratched myself there. I thought nothing more of it as I moved to Sausalito to check the view of the city from a favorite spot there, but the mildly painful itch continued to creep into my consciousness every so often. I wondered how I could’ve scratched myself through several layers of clothing. When I got home, I had a look to find a tick had helped himself to my hospitality, somehow making an epic journey from ground level all the way up my leg to the front of my left hip. I was able to remove him easily with some very pointy tweezers, but this morning the bite mark is red and a bit swollen. Not quite what the Geographic shooters have to deal with, but still–landscape photography is not just a walk in the park!