The other day I started looking back at some old photos from a few years ago. I didn’t start shooting seriously until recently so my catalog doesn’t go back that far, but it’s full of my first long exposure attempts, cityscape shots, and terrible HDR blends. I found many photos that I haven’t processed yet and really like! I’ve decided to re-process a number of them to share here. This gallery is a representation of why I love this city, why it will be hard for me to ever move away, and why we deal with/have the high rent prices.

This city has a lot to offer and a lot still to be discovered. So I plan on sticking around.

I think I’ve finally realized why I became so attached to photography. I think San Francisco itself had a lot to do with it as well as the incredible surrounding area. When I was younger, I was always captivated by the photos, especially the wallpaper sites, and looking at long exposure seascapes. I never thought I would be creating images similar to what I grew up setting my computer wallpaper to. Most of us probably had some sort of photography in our lives growing up. If it was family vacations or just playing around with your grandparents old cameras, most of us took pictures at some point. It wasn’t till Junior year in High School that I wanted my first DSLR and wanted to really get into it. At the time I was actually more interested in ceramics but wanted to start dabbling in photography. So I took the offered photo class. We had to work and start off with film, but me being young and wanting new all the time, I had no interest in film, or learning in general for that matter. All I wanted to do was go shoot and get outside of the classroom with my new Canon 7D. So we convinced the teacher, Franz to allow us to do digital instead. He said fine, we just have to turn in double the amount of photos for critique, which was fine with me! When I look back to that class, I know I didn’t pay much attention. I did learn a bit of studio lighting though. I may not have realized the benefit then, but I use what I learned the most now.

Now that I am in San Francisco, I have a whole city at my disposal and much more beyond that. No more being stuck on a school campus. I started taking pictures all around the city. I did what I could without a vehicle. After my first year I was fortunate enough to get my car, which has allowed me to travel all up and down the coast at all hours of the day. I honestly feel I wouldn’t be where I am with photography if I didn’t have the ability to travel freely, because what I shoot is very weather dependent and as we all know, weather can change on a whim.