Still, we were here, and I wasn’t going home without a few shots.  As we walked on the over look above Fort Mason, approaching the Bridge, I began to see the photograph emerge.  I used my telephoto to focus and take the light reading on the brown buildings at the Fort, and then, holding the shutter button half way down, reframed to include part of the bridge and the water.  The fog is there, in all its glory, creeping through the Gate and into the Bay.  The mood is somber, but the detail shows up and it tells at least one story of the weather in San Francisco.

The key to this problem is taking the exposure reading deliberately on a medium dark neutral element of the photograph.  This technique evens out the light reading for the camera, and will show detail in the structures in the image.  If I had wanted the Bridge and Fort to silhouette, I would have left the camera on a wide angle and shot.  The camera would have picked up the ambient light, and the Bridge and Fort would have been in shadow. 

Decide what you want before you shoot, and then control your camera.

The fog comes in many forms and sweeps across the Bridge in many patterns.  On this particular day, we were approaching San Francisco from the Marin overlooks along the Bay shore and could see the fog creeping northward.  The north tower was till in sunlight.  I wanted the color of the bridge and the Marin Headlands, and so I used the telephoto lens to frame down and pointed my little focusing and light meter square at the brown hills, held the shutter button half way down to hold the reading, and then recomposed the shot.  The results showed the fog moving northward, but retained the color of the Bridge and the headlands, and also picked up some of the sunlight illuminating the fog and turning it into a rosy glow.

The important part of this is determing what you want the final shot to look like.  If I had wanted the bridge and headlands to be dark, I would have pointed the metering poing at the fog itself.  The fog would have provided a white background against a dark Bridge and hill outline.

This man was one of the docent participants, playing the role of one of the gold seekers stopping off at the Fort for provisions.  I loved his hat and the character in his face.  The problem was that the hat threw a huge shaddow on his face, intensified by the sunny day.  What to do?  I couldn’t ask him to remove his hat or tip it back to reduce the shaddows.  I finally got down low, since he was sitting, and focused the exposure reading on his face.  I cropped down with my zoom lens, hoping to even out the light between his face and hat so I wouldn’t lose too much detail in that wonderful hat. 

This workshop was years ago, and I was shooting slide film with an analog camera.  Slide film is a good teacher.  There is very little room for error.  When I reviewed the developed film, I was delighted to find I had achieved my goal.  Today, I could brighten up his face in photoshop, but I didn’t.  My purpose has always been to get the shot in the first place.

Golden Gate Bridge in Fog

Welcome to The Accidental Photographer blog – full of tips and fun ideas to help you take great photos when you are out and about anywhere.

I’m Marsha Black, author of The Accidental Photographer, a book full of tips written for people who carry a point and shoot camera but don’t have a clue about how to get good photographs out of it.

This photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge is one good example. I took this photo when we stopped briefly at the viewpoint. I used two simple concepts, light and lines, to turn this photo from “Yeah, it’s the Golden Gate Bridge” to “WOW, It’s the Golden Gate Bridge!”. Even if you feel like you are a klutz with a camera, you, too, can learn these tips quickly and easily so you can enjoy your photos as much as I do.