Yesterday my family took a day trip to San Francisco, mainly to walk the Golden Gate Bridge. I have lived basically my entire life within a few hours of San Francisco and have probably driven across the bridge over a thousand times, but until yesterday had never set foot on the bridge. If you live near San Francisco or are visiting, it is worth the effort. I don’t recommend Saturdays, but it was still quite an experience.
You’re walking within a few feet of traffic, so the noise gets to you. If you start on the city side, the crowds can be a chore to navigate. And bikes riding on the wrong side of the bridge can get annoying. (Bikes are not supposed to ride on the east walkway on weekends, but apparently a lot of people can’t read the signs.) But once you get past the south tower, the crowds thin out and the view gets better. We didn’t walk all the way across, but did go about 2/3 of the way. I had kids with me and they weren’t up to the entire walk. I imagine on foot it would take less than two hours to go all the way across and back, taking some time to stop and enjoy the view, or shoot some pictures. You really could spend a day just around the bridge, there are plenty of things to see on both sides.
So, if you can, walk the bridge. I know it’s a “tourist” thing to do, but really should be done by anyone within driving distance, at least once. It is probably the single most recognized landmark west of the Statue of Liberty and probably the most well known bridge in the world, so it’s worth a couple of hours of your life.
I shot this in RAW (of course) with my standard 18-55mm lens. I did use a polarizing filter. I converted it to black and white and did all other processing in Digital Photography Professional, which came with my camera. It’s quite a good program, I was impressed with all it had to offer. I did apply a red filter to the image to add contrast. DPP can simulate red, yellow, orange and green filters with monochrome images. I thought that was pretty cool.
Here’s a few other shots. More are on Zooomr.
Hello there
Very Nice shots!! This place seems to be great to make a “photowalk”