This is another repost from my old blog of my trip to the USA. I guess you can figure out from the heading that this was the first day I was there. I went out with my host Nicci and we met up with a friend, Dan. It was a great day.
San Francisco is a beautiful city, but I didn’t really explore it much except for this day and one other. Most of my time was spent outside the city.
USA Wanderings: San Francisco Day 1
Some much needed sleep has been had and I am feeling so much better now. I slept for 12 hours the other night, it was great. When I woke the following morning I felt more myself and ready to get out to take photos.
I had prearranged with Dan Shehan to catch up with him and take photos in San Francisco on the third, the Wednesday when I arrived. So into San Francisco I went to meet him. I love meeting people that I have known on the blog, it is fantastic.
I have to admit the only thing I really wanted to see while there was the Golden Gate Bridge. Dan had asked me how I wanted to see the city, as a tourist or a photographer, and I said definitely as a photographer. So he picked a few places for us to go and see the bridge.
My view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I took this out the car window. Not a great shot, but I kinda like it. I can’t do too much processing here, the laptop I have with me is very small and it is hard to see exactly what I am doing, so I will have to wait until I get home and my 27inch monitor.
I used the Nikon D750 for most of the day, I think the last night shot I have to show you was taken the D800.
Perhaps having the fog or low cloud is not what a lot of people would like to see, but I loved it. For me it said welcome to San Francisco. I couldn’t believe how fortunate I was to get something like that. This was taken with the Nikon D750 and Dan lent me his 28-300mm Nikon lens, it will be good to compare it with the Tamron one, which I also used a lot. The Tamron 28-300mm is most definitely the lens I seem to be using the most here.
We took lots of photos of the bridge from different angles, but I won’t bore you with them all now, I do have more for the gallery, but not many. I will bore you with them over the next couple of months.
There are things that I want to do here, and one is to try foods that I’ve heard about, but we don’t really get in Australia. So I asked Dan about an American Cheeseburger, and he suggested we go to Mel’s Diner.
A Diner, such an American thing to me. I loved it, and the cheeseburger was fantastic. I felt like I was in the movie Grease. It seemed a bit like stepping back in time and our waiter really fitted the image I had. Brilliant experience.
We did drive around the steep streets and I saw a cable car, well a couple really. We didn’t go on them, we just looked. We went to the most crooked street in the world. though it was really hard to see it.
Dan took us to the Palace of Fine Arts. I tried the Tamron 15-30mm there on the D750 and it is a great lens. Also a beautiful place to take photos. We were getting the late afternoon sun coming through it and it was giving lovely shadows. Dan and I changed lenses again and I tried taking photos with the Nikon 28-300mm as well.
Then we went down to Crissy Field to see if we could get a sunset image behind the bridge.
We got a little colour, but not a lot. It was because I was there, really. I never seem to get really amazing sunsets. I did like the image above with the container ship heading out to sea.
Our final destination was to take some night shots of the Bay Bridge.
I used the D800 and my 24-70mm for this, as I wanted to do a 4 minute exposure and my intervalometer won’t go on the D750. I was pretty happy with this.
I guess one of the challenges when you are travelling is knowing that you may only get one chance to take photos so you have to take as many images as you can, but at the same time enjoy the experience as well. I think you have to be content with what you get, you might get the perfect conditions, but chances are you won’t, so go with it, it will be your experience of the place.
The time went so fast, and it was sunset before we knew it. It was a great day and I want to thank Dan for showing me around his place. I can tick the Golden Gate Bridge and a cheeseburger off the list now.
I used a lot of the gear that has been loaned to me. The Lowepro Pro Runner AW II is working out well. The Tamron Lens was brilliant and the Joby camera strap I’m trying out has been amazing. I can’t forget my Merrell hiking shoes which were a godsend and kept my feet comfortable all day.
Here are the above images and a few more from yesterday.
Great photos and I love reading your POV.
Thank you Dawn, that is good to hear, it is like a journal for me.
I hope you enjoyed your time here, Leanne. 😎
I did John, the USA is a beautiful country and I enjoyed getting to see some of it.
That’s great! 🤙🏻😎🇺🇸🇺🇸
😊😊🥰☺️
I’m so glad you got to see SF when you were here. But I do wish you could have seen Sacramento. We have the most beautiful Capitol building. I might be prejudiced!
Now that would have been something, sadly the trip wasn’t all under my control. It would have been nice to go there, sorry Anne, I wish I could say next time, but I don’t think there will be a next time. Thank you.
Great shots, but I particularly like your images of the Bridge.
Thank you Margaret, that bridge is pretty amazing, I think until you see it you don’t realize how big it is.
I remember these posts when you were in the US! This was fun to read about you going to a diner and getting a cheeseburger. We have a little diner down the street where we like to get breakfast–just pancakes and coffee, but it tasts so much better than what I can make at home. So glad you had a good time here, Leanne.
Can you believe it was 9 years ago this week that I was there? It still seems like yesterday. We don’t have diners like that here, so it was so much fun going to one. YOu are lucky to have one close by, it sounds great. Thank you Lois.