Something that I have learned about myself over the years is that I am not a very conventional person. Instead of going on a tropical cruise or to an all-inclusive resort in a different country, I decided to go to San Francisco for my senior spring break trip. No friends, just my mom and I. My Aunt Chrissy was living there at the time, so we had both a place to stay and someone who knew everything about the city. Being my first time on the west coast, we had lots of excursions planned and I knew that I wanted to take lots of photos on film.
I trekked my Pentax K1000 across the country and made sure that I made good use of it. The first major place that we visited was Muir Woods. As a huge Parks and Recreation person, I was super pumped to see some of the sights that they also saw in their San Francisco episode. Seeing the redwoods was breathtaking. I couldn’t stop taking photos, however, one issue that I found was the lighting. We were in the middle of a giant forest, so naturally it was a bit dark even in the middle of the day. While it did take me a bit of time to adjust my manual settings, it was very much worth it. I placed one of my favorite photos of the sun peeking through the trees on that day.
The next thing that we visited and viewed frequently was the Golden Gate Bridge. Let me tell you, I you think it looks cool in pictures just wait ’till you see it in person. Taking photos of the bridge is fun because there’s so much you can do with it. You can get far away and watch the sun set on the Pacific right next door or you can get up close and personal. Composition-wise, I tried to get unique angles of the cables and leading lines that the symmetrical structure offers to the eye.
In addition to seeing the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, I also made an effort to see the city sights. My dream has always been to live in a big city, so being in any urban setting brings me tons of joy. The photos of the buildings, the cable cars, and China Town are some of my favorites from the trip. I loved capturing both the culture and general beauty of the city. Similar to the bridge, lines of buildings and cable cars allows for so much opportunity when it comes to fun photo composition. The natural light from the sun also made it easy to get the perfect light settings and even capture some lens flares.
In opposition to the previous paragraph, we also made an effort to get away from the city scene with a trip down the coast to Big Sur. While in the small coastal town, we paid a visit to Pfeiffer Beach. This beach was truly magnificent. Its main attraction was the giant rock formations with waves constantly crashing through them. While I had a manual camera with literally only one shutter speed, it was certainly difficult to get a good image of this, but I made it my goal to do it anyways. I eventually figured out my rhythm and managed to get multiple photos of water in the air. I included below one of my favorites from that day.
Since I wrote lots about photo composition on this trip, I have included below the link to a really awesome article talking about the different aspects of composition. https://medium.com/photography-secrets/beginners-guide-to-photography-composition-88290d6c24ac
35mm Ce 