The day has finally happened. We packed our shit and skedaddled out of dodge!
Our flight was delayed out of Salt Lake City, but since we didn’t have a layover, the rental car was good any time after 7pm, and the hotel allowed check in until 6 am the next day (why? I don’t know, this’ San Francisco).
I really wanted to haul my camera out after we landed, but I wasn’t “sure enough” on where we needed to go, how long we had, and what the hell we were doing, so I left my camera in the bag, and the bag on my back. I did take cell phone images, and sent them to the kids and such, but I really don’t like putting cell phone images on my web site unless that is the only option left.
I’m so happy to finally get a trip going for Jamie and me. I have no reason that I picked San Francisco except that it is close enough you don’t need an entire day to fly here, the weather is “basically” good enough, and the package SoFi put together wasn’t too bad at all (parking is almost as much as our hotel alone though, phuckin’ big cities, I swear).
Once we picked up the car (2025 Mustang), and found our hotel (Embassy Hotel) we decided to grab some food and see some of the area we were in (I absolutely did NOT check for what this part of the city was going to be like – No regrets so far). It is a mix of homeless, delivery folks on mopeds (speaking Tagalog), and young up and coming whipper snappers crawling the bars and clubs around here. I did not feel any sense of danger or meth induced madness from anyone along the way. That might be because I think most homeless here were simply priced out of their homes and marijuana is legal here so they are mostly chilled out instead of strung out on something stronger and more debilitating. You can smell it in the air. I would much rather deal with a person high on pot than a drunk or someone high on something like crack, meth, fentanyl, or pcp.
Bad vibes out of the way, I was/am SO happy with these images. They were taken on my Pentax K-3 iii, using my Pentax-D FA 28-105mm lens. I was really worried because normally at night you have to use a lens with a wide open aperture (like a 1.4 or 2 at the smallest) and this lens only opens up to a 3.5. I cranked the ISO up to 3400 (cranked for me isn’t shit in the photography world, some people shoot at 6400 like it is nothing – I grit my teeth if I have to step up to 800 – so tonight was truly an experiment).
These images are sharp, colorful, pretty free of “grain” or “noise” in the digital world (it is there a LOT, but it is not distracting at all). These images are basically untouched also. I did not crop or adjust any colors when I exported them from RAW to jpg.
I hope you enjoy them, they’re all pretty self explanatory street photos, so here they are. And I am going to get myself to bed (It is muggy, and there is no AC in this hotel, so we’ll see how the window being left open works).
Hopefully I can get tomorrow’s images edited and posted as soon as we get home. I really hate editing images too long after I’ve taken them.
