I’ve been lucky to spend the past five days exploring San Francisco and Yosemite with Stuart Sipahigil, a friend and the author of Close to Home.  In San Francisco we photographed a Fort, the people of Chinatown and the landscapes of the Marin Headlands, but the real purpose of the Stuart’s trip was visit Yosemite and to do our best Ansel Adams impersonations.  I have never focused much on landscape photography, so, I was very excited to spend a few days learning some new skills.

I was excited to show Stuart around San Francisco and to spend the day photographing the city that I love.  I never tire of showing the city off just as I never tire of photographing it.  Our first stop was Fort Point.  Built in 1853, the only brick Fort on the west coast, it is located under the western side of the Golden Gate Bridge and offers a great perspective of the bridge.  It was raining when we got there, but we went inside and made some images of the interior anyway.  The fort’s architecture provides for some wonderful arches, curves and shadows.  At first glance I didn’t think the light was all that great, but, the more I looked the more I realized that the soft, diffused light from the storm was actually really nice.  The cold rain also felt right for the place, as the many soldiers who once inhabited the fort had to brave many cold, foggy, windy and rainy days and nights here while protecting the entrance the San Francisco Bay.  While there, a bride and groom came to the Fort to have their photographs taken.  Stuart and I followed at a distance and waited for the right moment to capture some photographs, hopefully they didn’t mind too much.  As he always seems to do, Stuart got a great image of the bride just as she walked in.

The next day we started out in Chinatown.  Now I’ve photographed Chinatown many, many times, and I always like to take visiting photographers there as I did with Sabrina Henry, Ray Ketcham, and Dorothy Brown a few weeks ago.  Not only is Chinatown jam packed with sights, sounds smells and culture, it is a tough place to photograph.  Its streets are compact, its shops are filled wall to wall with goods and the people there are not always welcoming to your camera lens.  I generally don’t like to be coy about photographing people, I’d rather ask for permission from my subjects first, but, in Chinatown this mostly gets you nowhere.  Here, a little patience and perseverance goes a long way.

After a little lunch we went to see the majestic Golden Gate Bridge.  I’ve always heard that the Golden Gate Bridge is the most photographed landmark in the world, something I’ve never verified.  And, while visitors I take to the bridge, or myself for that matter, are probably not going to take a unique photograph there, I think it is okay to make some trophy images for yourself wherever you travel.  Besides, to see the Golden Gate Bridge glow in the afternoon sun and to walk across it is a great experience.

We crossed the bridge and made our way up into the Marin Headlands.  There we were greeted by the fog, which came rolling in allowing us the chance to make some nice landscape photographs.  I’m lucky to have such a place this close to my house, just 15 minutes from downtown San Francisco, yet in another world.  I have photographed in the Marin Headlands before, but not nearly enough, and, as Stuart points out in his book it pays to approach the areas surrounding your home as if you were showing them to someone who has never been there before.

We set off early the next morning for Yosemite, just about 4 hours from my house by car.  I hadn’t been to Yosemite in about 5 years, and I’ve never been to the park in the winter or for the purpose of taking photographs and I was excited to enter the hallowed ground of Ansel Adams.  After entering the park, and after getting pulled over by a nice ranger(my excitement got the best of me and I may have been driving a bit too fast), we made our way to Bridal Veil Fall and to Tunnel View where the view of El Capitan, Half Dome and Cloud’s Rest is world class.  It is here where Ansel made some of his most famous photographs and where Stuart looked for the holes from his tripod.  It is also here where many tourists stop, jump out of their car only to snap a photo or two and move on in much the same was as they do while visiting the Louvre and the Mona Lisa.  Not everyone is going to stay for hours waiting to make a photograph, I understand, but, it just baffles me that people don’t take at least a few minutes to experience this view of what should be one of the wonders of the world.  Staring at a rock wall that is 3,000 feet tall has a way of humbling you.

The next day we planned to photograph more of the valley, including Half Dome and Yosemite Falls, the weather had other plans, however, as we were greeted with a gray, lifeless sky.  We made the best of the day, hiking up Tenaya Creek to Mirror Lake, spending time photographing the rushing creek and rocks.  It was frustrating that Stuart had come all this way only to have uncooperative skies, but it reinforced the fact that photography takes patience and that your expectations need to be flexible.

Our last day in Yosemite was much the same, but we were lucky to get some nice fog drifting through the valley making for some nice images.

Other than snapping the quick landscape while hiking I have never focused on landscape photography.  After the past few days though I’m really excited to focus more on learning some of these new skills.  Anyone who knows me knows that my attention span sometimes matches that of a 2 year old and photographing landscapes really forces me to slow down and to think.  I’ve rarely ever even used a tripod and that alone has been great for me, allowing me to think more about framing and exposure more than ever before.  So much of the photography that I’ve been doing lately, especially dogs, happens so quickly that you almost have to shoot instinctively, so slowing down has been like a vacation, albeit a learning vacation.  Working with Stuart has also been a great learning experience, as his depth of knowledge, especially when it comes to landscape photography is a great resource.

I leave Yosemite excited.  Excited to nurse these new skills and excited to approach yet another aspect of this art.  I also leave here vowing not to wait another 5 years to return.  Being so close to home, I have no excuse not to come back sooner.