Worth 1,000 Words: Welcome Home
San Francisco on a gorgeous spring afternoon
San Francisco, California, 2026
Leica M6, Cosina-Voigtlander 35mm f/1.2 Nokton Aspheric lens, Kentmere 400 film
Printed on Ilford MG RC Glossy Paper (10” on long side)
Fillmore Street near Japan Town. It has been a few years since I visited San Francisco. My former home was in the East Bay, and I used to make it over quite often back in the day. While San Francisco has changed during the past twenty years since we moved, and so have I, it’s still one of my favorite cities. And, I think it feels a little healthier now than when I last visited.
Landing in SFO, I picked up my rental car and went to meet my wife for lunch in Japan Town (she’d arrived a few days before me). Driving there, I had my first experience consciously sharing the road with a driverless car. Pretty cool. I think the Waymo was probably more considerate and careful in following traffic laws than the average human driver.
After lunch, my wife continued on to Kinokuniya Bookstore for some shopping. I headed out for a walk around the neighborhood. The scene above welcomed me back to the Bay Area almost immediately. Now, I know there’s no focal point that will grab you and shake you, nothing you’ll even see if you scroll past too quickly. But, in line with my goals for this series, I’ll take my time with it and at least share with you how it makes me feel. Maybe that will entice you to also spend a minute and see if it translates at all to you. If it doesn’t, I understand. And thank you for your time.
What really caught my eye first was the trees. They seem almost metallic to me in real life, and I think they print well with the silver salts on photographic paper. A lot of the detail in the tree bark is in shadows, making it important to have lots of shades of gray in the print.
This is a scan of the handmade print, made with my Epson V850 scanner with Silverfast software. I then used color grading in Adobe Lightroom to match the slightly warm tone of the Ilford paper.
In composing the shot, I’m sure that the bottom-left to top-right verticals of the trees and stairways influenced me. Of course, I didn’t consciously design around them, but the entire image has a diagonal stripe feel to me: dark at top, (very) bright in center, back to mostly shade near the bottom. And the trees reaching skyward pull it all up nicely for me. I also like how the tree branches, a major element, are not what grabs your eye first. They’re not in the center or the brightest area of the image. They’re a reward for a longer look.
Speaking of bright, that white wall in the center of the image took almost two stops of burning in on the enlarger to get the small amount of detail you see here. With both the bright wall and the shaded trees, I didn’t want to go too far in bringing them closer together. The scene was as you see here; I’ve just made the gray levels fit within the capabilities of the paper.
My usual tendency, probably based on focusing on nature photography a lot, is to isolate those tree branches with a longer lens. That would entirely lose any sense of location. As it is, the Victorian style buildings are emblematic of San Francisco and really add to the scene. And, as I’ve already mentioned, the front steps angling up and to the right are an important graphic element.
So, I’m pleased that I had the constraint of a single 35mm lens. It could have been any 35mm lens, as I was shooting fast film in bright daylight and therefore didn’t need the fast aperture of the Nokton f/1.2 lens. I think this shows that the Nokton can perform really well at smaller apertures. It’s not always easy to find a lens that can perform in low as well as abundant light but I think this lens does.
Leica has recently debuted the 35mm Noctilux f/1.2 Aspheric. I have no idea what 10x the price compared to my Nokton would bring and won’t make any value judgements because of that. In fact, I’m sure the Leica lens is superlative. All I can say is that while I do prefer and own many Leica lenses, since buying the Nokton, I have not taken my M6 out without it in the bag, and usually on the camera. Mine is the Generation IV model, which I gather is lighter and smaller than previous generations. I find it to be a very reasonable size; it never gets in the way.
I cannot say the same for another excellent Voigtlander 35mm lens, the f/2 APO Lanthar. While the image quality from the APO is truly outstanding, the size just doesn’t work for me on a rangefinder camera. I know that it deserves more of a fair shake, but for travel and street photography, I’ll always grab a smaller lens. If I can live with f/2, the Leica 35mm Summicron f/2 Aspheric is tiny and performs very well.
Now that I think about it, maybe I should use the APO Lanthar on my Nikon ZF with an adapter. On a mirrorless Nikon body, it won’t feel too large at all. Always good to have ideas for future projects…
Many people would want a person on the sidewalk in a shot like this. I did not. In the end, for me, it was about a graphic orientation of elements, again, driven by the trees. It also takes me back to exactly how it felt to be in San Francisco again for a short time. Mission accomplished.
If you’ve hung with my writing this far, I hope that means you’ve spent a little time with the image itself. And I hope you found that time well spent. Personally, I’m enjoying the experience of writing at least one thousand words with a small selection of images. I’m sure it will help to make me a better photographer and artist.