Seeing The Same Subject Differently

Bay Bridge - Framed
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

I think San Francisco is one of the most photogenic cities in the world. Of course, I am a bit biased, living within shouting distance from The City for most of my life. The fact is, however, I have shot the same areas of the city many times and it isn’t always easy to find new subject matter in these areas that I frequent.

The challenge is to find new ways to see old subjects. Take the Bay Bridge, for example (I happen to think the Bay Bridge is at least as beautiful as its more famous sister, the Golden Gate). I have shot this bridge from many angles and many different views from the city. Yet when I walk around the area around the bridge, I am always looking for something new that I haven’t shot before.

In this shot, for example, I was shooting the beautiful brick architecture of the Hills Bros. Building. As I walked through the building, I realized the arches in the front of the building created a perfect frame for the towers of the bridge. I walked from archway to archway until I found the one which I felt had the cleanest foreground.

It was important for me to maintain the detail in the brickwork because that was what I was truly focusing on. I had no flash with me, so I popped up the built-in flash on my Nikon D90, cranked the compensation down to -2.3 stops so it wouldn’t have that “amateur used his built-in flash” look, and took my shot. When I got it into Lightroom, I further balanced the red hues of the brick with the blues of the sky to give the now B&W image an infrared look.

How many people have a photo of the Bay Bridge? Almost everyone who visits San Francisco I would imagine. How many have a shot taken in an archway of the Hills Bros. Building? Much fewer. And how many have one in black and white with a simulated infrared look? Hopefully just me!