The other day I noticed a pretty good break beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, so I thought I’d put my B + W #110 ND filter to use to soften the water as it broke on the rocks. The fog was also moving nicely as is passed through the north tower.

The surf happened to be hitting the shore pretty hard every five minutes or so, throwing water up onto the parking area at Fort Point. There were very few cars there at 8am, though every minute or so a jogger or three passed by on their way down to Hopper’s Hands. I backed my truck up to the chains and set up my tripod in the bed, reminded of how Ansel Adams used to shoot from the roof of his vehicle. Things were going fine until a big wave came in and splashed not only into the back of the truck, but all the way to the rear window where I was standing, soaking my pants and boots. Reflexively I covered the lens of my camera with one hand as I braced myself with the other. As the sea water drained out the back of the truck bed, I decided to seek a new position from which to record the pleasing, if a bit dodgy, scene there beneath the bridge.

I pulled forward, away from the water, and into the lane behind the parking spaces. I figured that there was so little car traffic, and no other cars parked in the area, that this wouldn’t cause any problems. It turned out that I was safe enough from getting wet, but the lane I was in was also used by joggers. Several passed by without incident, just moving briefly into the parking spaces to go around the artist at work. But a trio of runners came by just as another large wave hit, giving the woman closest to the shore a wet shoe. “Sorry!” I offered as she glared over her shoulder. I climbed down to move the truck again.

Next I brought my gear up onto the hillside beyond the road and shot the above image from there. The rising sun was really sweet and warm on the bridge and the building at Fort Point. I made several exposures, one ruined because I had my German Shepard, Charlie, in the truck with me, and he decided to get up and turn around several times on his backseat bed before lying back down during on of the long exposures. Thanks, pooch!

When I was done, I cleaned the lens and all exposed gear off carefully, so that no salt water would stay in place for longer than necessary. I even rinsed off the tripod legs with the hose when I got home. Back on the computer, I found many more spots on the RAW image than usual, due to the spray from the ocean that hit the lens. So I made liberal use of Photoshop’s mostly excellent Spot Healing Brush Tool. I had several spots on and between the cables of the bridge towers, where this tool would not work, and I had to use the clone tool a fair bit, as well.

In the end the real challenge, not getting washed out to sea, was met and I got an image I quite like. So, another happy ending in landscape photography land!

Info: Made with a Nikon D700 Digital SLR Camera, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Wide Angle Zoom Lens, on a Manfrotto 055XPROB Pro Tripod with a Manfrotto 488RC2 Midi Ball Head and a Nikon MC30 Remote Cable Release in Mirror Up mode.

Exposure at 30 seconds, f/18, ISO 100, 44mm, single exposure processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, thousands of spots from sea spray removed in Adobe Photoshop CS4.