[September 2014]
Most of the beaches in San Francisco are easy to get to, once you find parking. Marshall Beach is the exception – it’s a 15-minute ‘trek’ to get to it. And having to carry photography equipment makes the trek a little harder. It’s a rewarding location for a photo shoot, with its rocks and atmosphere and its closeness to the Golden Gate Bridge.
[Marshall Beach, shot while ‘scouting’ the location in 2013]
But wind and – at times – high tide can make things difficult. There aren’t many convenient spots in which to set a light-stand up. And, even with a sand-bag weighing it down, a stand may not stay up for long. A lighting-assistant becomes rather essential.
From the model’s viewpoint, posing at this location has its challenges too, for sure, as does keeping warm between shots or series.
We were at Marshall Beach on a cloudy and rather windy day. It was the first time I shot with Dasha U., a model from Salt Lake City. In hindsight, I know that I had the perfect model for the concept, the location and the day. (I think I knew even as the images were being processed after the shoot.) I have since shot with Dasha pretty much whenever she’s in the Bay Area.
Dasha U can stand tall, stretch or bend herself as the ‘flow’ demands, and repeat the same shot several times with an aim to achieving some perfection – even while the wind is blowing and it’s a few degrees below a comfortable temperature. For the first half-hour or so, she was nursing a very large mocha with soya milk, as her ‘warmer’. It then went too cold to be useful. (We’d had to make a few stops in North Beach before one of the coffee-shops had soya milk.) She had brought a red skirt as wardrobe, and we wanted to let the red color play with the Golden Gate Bridge’s famous red. We had also brought a glass and some wine, in case we wanted to lay the red on thick.
Our lighting-assistant was Stav H., with whom I have worked on many, many shoots since.
It’s tempting to get a number of shots with the bridge in them. The most obvious angle on the bridge, from the open beach, is wonderful. But, for that angle, you might as well have gone to Baker Beach. It’s at the farther end of Marshall Beach that you get those really acute angles on the bridge. Not only is that angle less common, it means that the GG Bridge – while being a part of the ‘story’ – doesn’t take up too much real-estate in your frame. It also lets you get the bridge and the rocks (and the model) without showing the beach sand at all. Here’s an example.
[Touches of Red, f/5.6, 1/250 s, 100 ISO, light through umbrella, from camera’s right]
And it was important not to miss out on the bluffs, either:
In the meantime, Dasha’s Web site is here.