My most frequent collaborator, Anoush Anou, was visiting the Bay Area and I had a chance to shoot with her on Labor Day. It had only been a few months since I had shot with her on a Utah tour, but it is always good to work with her. On this trip, she was based in San Francisco, and since the forecast temperature for the day was 113 °F where I live, my plan was to shoot in the East Bay in the morning, and then after it warmed up move over towards the coast in San Francisco. We decided to start the morning’s shoot by going up Mount Diablo, and to possibly search for the elusive “egg”. Interestingly as we went through the gate, when we asked the ranger about finding the egg, she said its existence was just a rumor. Maybe she misunderstood what we were looking for, but that turned out to be bad information. Anoush had been there once before.
Despite being Labor Day there weren’t many people around, and we were able to find some privacy and shoot. We explored around a bit while trying to avoid poison oak, which we had both had bad experiences with in the past. We eventually found “the egg”, an interesting geologic feature in a rock wall, and we shot there. It got pretty warm, and I hadn’t brought any water from the car, not expecting to be away quite so long, and on the way back the heat got to me a bit. We headed down into Danville and got some lunch and recovered a bit.
By the time we finished lunch, it was over 100. We decided to head into San Francisco where it was cooler, drop off Anoush’s car, then try to go to Marshall’s Beach to do some shooting in the afternoon with the Golden Gate in the background. This is where we discovered the Labor Day crowds. It took us quite a while to get over there, and when we did there were lots of people, and finding a place to park near the beach was quite difficult. We abandoned that goal, and cruised around eventually finding a place to park near Rob Hill, a public campground located near the Presidio’s highest point. There were a few people walking through the area, but we walked around through the trees and were able to take a few pictures. The afternoon wasn’t as productive as I’d originally planned, but it was a nice day with a pleasant walk through the forest near the Presidio. All-in-all an enjoyable day creating some nice photographs despite the heat and the crowds.
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