Labor Day Weekend is here! And it also means the end of what the locals call, Fogust. This is the official start of our version of summer, and it is called Indian Summer, though it is nothing like an “Indian summer.”
This weekend and the coming week, the temperatures across the Bay Area (and in California at large) will be reaching record levels. There has even been a heat advisory. San Francisco, a city, usually cool because of the winds of the Pacific Ocean, is expecting temperatures in the eighties.
Perhaps, that is why I thought it would make sense to share a few more from my “Cool Gray City” series of photos. It is unlikely that we will see any fog for a while, so this is probably the last set for a few weeks.
Have a great long weekend, everyone! #coolgraycity!
The winds of the Future wait
At the iron walls of her Gate,
And the western ocean breaks in thunder,
And the western stars go slowly under,
And her gaze is ever West
In the dream of her young unrest.
Her sea is a voice that calls,
And her star a voice above,
And her wind a voice on her walls—
My cool, grey city of love.
George Sterling.
“San Francisco,” Gary Kamiya writes in his book, Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, “is all about the collision between man and the universe.” What a wonderful description of the city on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. As someone who wants to avoid people, urban blights, and grand vistas in his photos, San Francisco is a challenge and chalice from a visual standpoint. As a photographer, I struggle to decide: Should I ignore the manmade and instead look to gifts of the gods? Or should I embrace the outcomes of human ingenuity? There is an abundance of both in the city of seven hills.
A poem by George Sterling inspired Kamiya’s book title, so I am taking a cue from both of them — I have come up with a new project: cool gray views of the city, and it is my way of telling its visual story.
It will combine what I love most in my photography — silence, fog, abstraction, and an opportunity to wander. One of my new photo friends on Glass, after seeing my shared photos, called them “dreamy grays.” It never really occurred to me, but that comment and Kamiya’s book helped coalesce everything for me.
Ironically, I have been on the journey for a while; I didn’t realize it. I am sharing some photos that tell you what I have in mind. It is an unending creative effort, and I hope they will one day become part of a larger body of work.
I will tag this series #coolgraycity!
August 21, 2022. San Francisco
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Little did I know that this photo would start a journey to find a creative visual identity. Unsurprisingly, it was in Japan, just off the shore of Naoshima’s famous art island. The photo below is a companion photo. Both photos were made with a Leica Q — which quickly lost relevance as a tool. They were both JPEGs. I forgot to record the scene in the native DNG format.
August 5, 2022. San Francisco
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On a rare windless late-night drive along one of the fjords in Iceland’s Westfjords, moody cloud cover and near-perfect reflections were great ingredients for a monochromatic landscape vista. Made with Lecia M11 using Leica 90mm f/2.8 Elmarit-M. ISO 800. Shutter speed 1/90th of a second. Aperture f/4.8.
August 2, 2022. San Francisco.
This photo was featured on Leica Camera’s social media feeds on August 1, 2022
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One of the great joys of living in San Francisco is having a cool and foggy summer. This year especially, I feel grateful for the chilly weather. The entire planet seems to have been enveloped by obscene heat, which is taking its toll not only on humans but also on flora and fauna.
Early in the morning or late in the evening, I find myself on the edge of the waters, enjoying the cool air of the ocean. In the evenings, however, I am enthralled by the multiple formations of Pelicans flying over the restless waters of San Francisco Bay. I captured a few such formations using the Leica M11 camera with a Leica Summilux-M 90mm f/1.5 ASPH Lens. These are edited versions of the photos I captured with the Leica M11.
The 90-Lux lens is a beast of a lens and renders the highlights in only a Leica lens can. These images were made wide open. ISO 64. 1/2000th of a second. Aperture f/1.5. I set the lens to focus on infinity. I intentionally wanted to avoid sharpness. Instead wanted to render what my eyes were seeing and what I was feeling.
