I do not have much to say for this blog post. It is San Francisco. Nothing less, nothing more. I did not take as many pictures of the city as usual, as I was saving up my rolls of film for other occasions.
If you like driving, nice vistas and have to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles (or the other way around), take Highway 1 along the Pacific coast. During my last visit to California, I was exactly in that situation, but unfortunately, Highway 1 was closed for a stretch of about 1 or 2 miles. That meant I had to take a detour along Highway 101 and only got to take pictures at the Pacific coast close to the beginning and the end of my trip. The images in this post are representative of this disconnect from my favorite route to LA.
Pillar Point Harbor is a little fishing harbor north of Santa Cruz and south of San Francisco. It was my last stop as the sun went down at the end of a stormy and rainy day.
The Griffith Observatory, perched on top of the Hollywood Hills next to Los Angeles, offers exhibits for stargazers and a great view of the iconic Hollywood sign and Los Angeles itself.
It is rare to have more than a few images in a day of shooting that one is thrilled with. Some have to be culled because of user error, a good amount are dull, another few are what you would call “good” or “acceptable” and on a good day, you have two or three that do this certain “something” for you. My attempt to cull the images from the seven rolls (eight images per roll) that I shot at the Peterson Automotive Museum “suffered” from unexpected success: I had only a handful that I could throw out because they were below the “good” bar, and I got so many that I liked that I had to change my culling strategy. This post is the next batch of ten images I “like” to “really like”.
A gem in Los Angeles that I only heard from during my trip and that I was told I had to see. The Peterson Automotive Museum has three accessible stories above ground with the ground floor dedicated to Tesla worship, the floor above teeming with Porsches of all eras, and the one above exhibiting various famous cars from movies and car culture. The star of the show is the underground garage called “The Vault”. Around 150 classic vehicles are packed tightly for the eager car enthusiast to discover. All images were shot on Kodak Portra 160 pushed by 2 stops to compensate for the low light and f/3.5 aperture of the lens.
Mirror Lake and Yosemite Falls (at least the lower one) are easy to reach from Yosemite Valley and are worth the short walk.
I have been to Yosemite National Park several times before, mostly around the year’s warmer months. This time it was during early March and the weekend before my visit the park was closed due to heavy snow storms. I had doubts that the park would open in time for my day trip from the San Francisco Bay area to Yosemite, but I got lucky and it opened just in time to moon me again with its natural beauty. In this first part, and the upcoming second blog post, I am sharing some of this beauty with you.
Alcatraz was a brutal place back when the prison was in use and a visit to the island prison complex gives a stark reminder of those times. The audio tour inside the cell blocks is especially eye-opening in that regard. The contrast between life behind bars and outside of the cell blocks and the prison yard was completely unknown to me. Of course, I had seen Alcatraz in movies, but before visiting the island I was not aware of how beautiful the island is. It looks like the prison is a cement block nestled inside a flower garden.
My first visit to Santa Monica Pier felt strangely familiar. It was as if I had seen that in a movie or game, I played many decades ago. The pier is beautiful and has the cheapest paid parking I have seen in LA. Worth a visit.
