Early morning fog (smog?) in San Francisco

It's been just over a year since I last made it over to San Francisco and I'm only just getting around to sharing any of the photographs I made on that last trip. I got some lovely photographs but the visit as a whole was a bit of a disaster.

Work schedule and cheaper flights meant I did a Thursday-to-Thursday trip, meaning I'd have one night in SF, the weekend to myself, then 4 days with the team in the SF office working on the new brand and other projects, so I booked a little weekend trip to Monterey and Big Sur. I usually stay at the Clift when I'm in San Francisco for work and the with this split stay I got two different rooms. The first room—sadly only for one night—ended up having a nice view over the tops of nearby buildings and when I got up in the morning there was beautiful light with a good bit of fog (or maybe smog—it seemed dirty) sitting in amongst the buildings.

I didn't have too much time before heading to the office but set up my tripod to take a few shots, before realising I could actually open the window this high up (not often the case) giving a much clearer view.

With the window slid open, a lovely cinematic frame for the view was set and so I pulled the camera back to get the main photograph up above. I'm really happy with this image, particularly that framing with the window frame itself. The small highlights on the edges of the window frame and the subtle detail above and below add a bit of extra depth and context to the image, as well as that cinematic feel.

With a lovely scene and only one chance to photograph it, I took a few more photos of various sections and details of the available view and mostly processed them in black and white, which just seems to feel right here.

Later that day I picked up my rental car and drove down to Monterey for the weekend. I had a fantastic day on the Saturday driving down the coast, visiting a couple of the state parks and having a lovely lunch with a stunning view at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands hotel. 

Unfortunately, Saturday was the last good day of my trip: I awoke on Sunday feeling just horrible, but needing to check out of my room to return to San Francisco that night. While I'd planned another day of photography before heading back to the city, instead I spent the whole day crawling back to San Francisco wondering why I felt so sick and what it was. After stopping for lunch at Alice's Restaurant above Redwood City, I sat for 40 minutes shivering in the car before I was able to drive again. Anyway, checked back into the Clift I asked them to call me a doctor the following morning who kindly informed me I had flu and prescribed Tamiflu which I only remember hearing about during the bird flu epidemic a few years ago. It did its job and I felt tons better the following day and better again the day after that, but I was confined to my hotel room for the rest of my stay in SF to avoid infecting others and didn't take any more photographs. Still, I got these nice shots in the city and some others down the coast which I'll share another day...