An Unexpected Turn of Events

Recall when you were in kindergarten, remember how you'd be given some xerox'ed page out of a 1960's coloring book of some random thing that you really didn't care about, with the instructions to color it in? I hated coloring while in kindergarten, and I still do. Even worse, you'd come home and your parents, no matter how horrible it was, would act as if it was a check from the Publisher's Clearing House prize patrol, they'd affix it to the refrigerator to hang for posterity, or until you brought home another god awful mess, that, would hopefully show some sign of improved coordination.

Well, I'm still at that level, 22 years later, trying to show some signs of improved coordination. My wife thinks my photos have reached the point where they won't make our small apartment look like the house from Sanford and Son. Do you know what that means? We are going to frame and hang up some of my prints. (Dear God, what is she thinking?) After much discussion, we decided that we'd put 3 "city themed" photos in our entryway. (These photos will also serve as warning to all those who enter that they should expect to be flooded with stories of my latest random photo trip.)

Unfortunately, we only have two photos (in our theme) that we thought were worthy of being put up for guests to see (NYC skyline shot and one of the Golden Gate). However, our original plan called for three, so we needed to get another one ASAP.

After reading Thomas Hawk's blog post on the top 10 places to photograph in San Francisco, I felt the urge to go up to the Mandarin Oriental hotel in SF and sneak up to the top floor sky walk. After monitoring the weather forecast for the past few days, Brandon, my wife (Sara), and I trekked up to San Francisco Sunday night on a crusade to fill the blank spot on my wall.

Now, the Mandarin Oriental is one of the swankiest hotels in San Francisco. The three of us are typical Silicon Valley folks. We're rocking the jeans, the t-shirts, and random backpacks full of camera gear (well, typical save the last part). There was unanimous concern we'd get cornered by hotel staff and sent to a Chinese prison camp as we tried to go up to 48th floor at 11PM on a Sunday night to take pictures.

So there we were, this traveling road show of photographic misfits, leaving the comfort of our warm valley dwellings and companionship of sandal wearing kinsfolk, to explore the world of people who spend more money on shoes than I have on cars. Now I’m not sure if it was either our suave Silicon Valley demeanor, our unsuspicious nature, or plain ignorance that got us past the virtual armada of people waiting at the front desk to stop folks just like ourselves from wandering their fine establishment at all hours of the night.

Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic. We pretty much just walked in, hit the elevator button, and went up to the 48th floor without so much as anyone giving us a second look. We got up to the skywalk, and the view was just magnificent. Unfortunately, the windows were dirty on the outside, and there was enough low level fog to make every light have a giant halo that screamed, "Go shoot somewhere else!"

Afraid of overstaying our welcome at the Mandarin, we decided to hop in the car and head over to Treasure Island for some night shots of the city skyline. We drove around TI a bit and eventually pulled onto the side of the road and started unpacking our gear. Now one of the great things about San Francisco, is the plethora of completely shady people who seem to live in the shadows and remind you of Jack the Ripper. I quickly noticed that such a man was behind us! Yay!

So there we were, 2 software engineers and a school teacher, taking photos of a slightly foggy San Francisco skyline being watched by this strange homeless man wearing US Army camouflage garb. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, which for some reason, made him 10 times more shady. I started thinking whether or not my 40D attached to my Manfrotto ball head + tripod would make a decent club. I surmised it would, but decided not to test the theory. I quickly shuttled everyone back into the car and we drove a mile down the road. Now, at this point, I was hoping I'd get one decent city shot. However, it never happened. In fact, the only shot I got of the skyline was this zoom effect I did of the Ferry Building on the SF side of the bay. It’s not a bad shot, but by no means is it “wall worthy.”



It was really really windy, and even with a heavy aluminum tripod, my 70-200mm lens was just catching so much wind, I couldn't get any sharp shots at all. I was about to call it a night, when Sara screamed, "Look, raccoon on the rocks!" Brandon and I looked down, and there was a raccoon standing on the rocks about 10 feet from us. I grabbed my speedlite, threw it into E-TTL mode, and started firing away.



The raccoon quickly disappeared, and then reappeared from a crevice between two rocks with 4 baby raccoons. It was obviously a mother raccoon scouting out things for her children. These little guys were pretty dam cute. I ended up taking a good 15-20 shots of these little bandits before they wandered off in search of breakfast.



So what started out as a trip to fill a blank spot on a wall, ended up with a blank spot on my wall. However, we did get some shots of some adorable little creatures, in one of the most unexpected of places. I guess that just goes to show you, no matter how much planning you do in advance, things will almost always turn out in a completely different way. Just be ready to adapt and see what happens.