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Thread: Pre-dawn cityscapes

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    San Joaquin Valley, California
    Posts
    9,599

    Pre-dawn cityscapes

    For several years now, I've taken an annual "street hike." I park my truck at the park which was old Crissy Field in San Francisco and walk to the Ferry Building. I follow the waterfront for a while and the lights out in the bay reflecting in the calm water are a visual feast. If a ship is leaving port so much the better. There is a feeling of travel and adventure that electrifies the atmosphere. What port will she call at? Could San Francisco Bay look much different than the Grand Canal or Manila in the dark?

    The Safeway is always open and I go inside the lighted market to get a cup of coffee. The night crew are nearing the end of their shift, and discuss common life subjects---relationships, rent, sports, money, ambitions...stuff like that. A few minutes later I'm back in the darkness with a cup of good unpretentious coffee to warm my hands.

    I cut through Ft. Mason and the vintage military buildings just begin to appear out of the darkness---that tiny Quartermaster port at the base of the bluff with it's neatly lined warehouses on piers and victorian styled officer's quarters now serving civillian functions ("centers" for this or that purpose) Naked lightbulbs all wear their halos in the pre-dawn mist.

    I cut South from the Maritime Museum at edge Fisherman's Wharf (which is a ghost town now. and head uphill and past the old High School ( which actually looks like what I'd expect a high school in a big city to look like, for once. Can there be any more grotesque architecture than that of public schools built during the past 60 years?) And descended Lombard St. the "crookedest street in the world" and hit Columbus Ave.

    By now the sky is the color of polished steel. The belfries of St.s Peter and Paul guard over little Washington Square. The italian Bakeries have just opened up and the lights and smells (and sugar) look inviting (my Safeway coffee now a long gone memory) but I press on towards upper Grant Street where the chinese grocery markets are receiving crates of vegetables, and chickens and geese are cooking on skewers. The Transamerica pyramid, Montgomery Street, and at long last Market Street begin to show signs of life. By the time I get to Justin Herman Plaza the brunt of the rush hour explodes into action along with a drumming street musician who is just setting up.

    I escape to the waterfront again, shielded by the Ferry Terminal the farmer's market has begun and I am rewarded with breakfast (and more expensive, very pretentious coffeee) from one of the vendors and looking East I see Oakland and Alemeda clothed in sunshine for the first time this morning.

    Lots of ideas for photographs here. Once I took my Brownie Reflex along (compose in the fungus plauged viewfinder, set on "B" brace against whatever is handy and count "one thousand one, one thousand two...") and the results were moderately sucessful in a funky jiggly sort of way. I keep telling myself to take along the Crown Graphic and stuff a Grafmatic with TMY but each year forget (besides the crown has sprung a leak in the bellows.)

    The main issue is that I really need a tripod for this subject (even with a diminuative 35mm!) but then it becomes a "photo shoot" rather than the "pilgrimage" (? to where? I'm still unsure of why I do this every year except that I find it intensely satisfying) and I'm unwilling to give up that aspect of the "hike." I'm wondering is anyone else here has similar experiences, maybe in other big cities elsewhere in the world?
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    now in Tucson, AZ
    Posts
    3,618

    Re: Pre-dawn cityscapes

    Well, this speaks to the nature of photography making you an 'observer' rather than being a 'participant'. But when you're really on your game, you can 'observe' (photograph) and still fully participate in the 'event'... sounds like a marvelous experience. Perhaps you've captured it better in words than you could in pictures? I tend to doubt it... You've made me think of Brett Weston's marvelous photograph from the '30s, looking down on the harbor at twilight; one of my favorites; thanks.

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