I've always found, that you explore a city best by walking around.
Along the way to the many historical and architectural sites, I focused on the human being as part of it.
A reoccurring element in San Francisco is the vast number of giant objects, found in nature and architecture.
Anything from the giant redwood trees to giant bridges.
The Palace of Fine Art, a giant structure with roman archways and Greek statues, located in the heart of a rich Victorian style city. It's a beautiful place for your gaze to look up and admire, where you actually are. A place that was built to give citizens a place to rest.
Amongst the giant monument and giant trees, I found a woman sitting and typing on her phone.
I was walking along the pier and saw a fisherman distracted while holding onto his fishing rod.
He lost his grip and it dropped into the bay.
Inside Alcatraz in the Recreation Yard. The audioguide mentioned the harsh wind that the inmates feared in winter. Being there myself in the late summer, the wind blew over the wall, strong and loud.
Some tourists decided to shelter themselves by walking along the wall, waiting for their party.
A women inside looking for shelter from the outside.
Originally, I wanted to capture the grandeur of the trees. However, the sheer scale of them didn't translate itself in the picture. This changed, when a person entered.
Walking into Chinatown I saw fewer and fewer people. The shops were empty. A rare moment to be captured in busy San Francisco.
The numbers of tourists in San Francisco sometimes make you forget that it is actually a real city with ordinary people.
A regular walker just passing through to work or on her way to lunch.
I had just bought my new telephoto lens and wanted to test it in a familiar environment. I concentrated on capturing detailed craftsmanship within the architecture. However, after just leaving the Plaza de Espana with its rich architectural design, I changed my focus towards the people, more importantly the tourists.
In contrast to the Plaza de Espana, the Alcázar can only be accessed via paid entrance, hence reducing over-crowding. The audio-guides helped pace the tourists through sections of the Alcázar. In a sense, it was for me like a controlled street-photography environment. This led to most of the tourists perfectly placed and staged.
With their focus on the architecture, it helped frame tourists with what they were seeing and their own fascination and curiosity as they were learning.
A happy coincidence of a photo.
I had just taken a few photos from the centre of the Plaza de Espana and worked my way up to the inside walkway. Amongst many tourists surrounding me I concentrated taking pictures of the architecture.
I was framing the pillars in a way to show the curvature of the building. I had activated my peaking to manually focus. As I was concentrating to take my picture, I hadn't seen someone poke her head out. So, when I saw the preview, I was surprised to see something else in my picture. Surprised, I double checked and saw what had happened.
I immediately readjusted to take this picture and captured this:
A tourists posing as her picture was taken from a friend down below.
This image intrigued me particularly, because of the light coming in from the inner courtyard and the tourist's placement within the environment in which we, the viewer, can see her perspective.
From a Lighting stand point, this gives this picture a clear division between foreground and background. In addition, the light is both on the subject and the object that we observe.
The room started emptying and my hope of capturing a picture like the previous one diminished.
Suddenly, a man appeared from the archway.
There he stood perfectly waiting in light.
