Pier 7 San Francisco

UPDATE: I just got point out that All piers North of Bay bridge are Odd except #14. South of the bridge are where all the even pier at :)

What: This is the picture of San Francisco city

When: I got to this location around 8:30pm on Jun 15, 2009 (~30 min before sunset). I parked on The Embarcadero across Pier 6 (many people call this Pier 7 but from the map it's Pier 6). Since it was late on a week day, I could easily get a free parking spot at the meter. This particular picture was taken at 8:50pm. I got there just right on time to capture the sun set light. Lighting is very critical in ALL picture. In case like this where you have no control over the nature light, you can waste the whole day and could not get a good shot.

Where: To get this shot, walk all the way to the end of the pier. Don't forget to stop along the way for some beautiful sunset shot at other piers, look back at coit tower, and all the building start to light up. Walking time about 10 min to get to the end. But you could end up spending 1 hr plus at this location (FYI so if you have to pay for the meter), I did. Photography is a time killer hobby. I like sunset shots but this whole process change lighting every second so it's hard to walk away and not capture it. You'd miss your best shot the second you walk away!

How: I used Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm for this one. It's important to get the right angle because you can't ever edit the angle once you capture it (possible but don't go there). So look, scan the entire area in view finder for any error, not just your subject, all the surrounding counts.

Here's the setting

Focal Length: 11mm

F-Number: f/4

Exposure 1/3 sec ( I didnot have my tripod at the moment so leaning on the light pole help)

ISO: 400

Flash: not fired

I also had it in raw (.NEF file). And this is the result:

Of course it's not perfect, most of the nice, eye catching pictures you see were edited one way or another. I used Photoshop CS3 and Photomatix Pro3.1 to get the result at the top of this post. I'll go into detail on how to make it looks juicy later on.