Yesterday we went on a leisurely shoot in San Francisco. I have been on Pier 7 before, but I did not get the light I wanted. We decided that night shots would look perfect when the tungsten lamps illuminate the pier.

I decided to go black and white, as the extreme yellow of the lights conflicted with the blue/purple sky.

I took this image on the halfway point between the Embarcadero and the end of Pier 7. A wide-angle lens allowed me to include the Ferry Building and the Transamerica Pyramid.

I chose a small aperture and an exposure time of 30 seconds and manually focused my wide-angle lens to get the maximum depth of field. I lowered my tripod so that the camera would be slightly above my waist level.

The camera height let me shoot almost straight. When you point your camera up or down too much, you get projection distortion (except with tilt-and-shift lenses). This distortion is even more pronounced with wide-angle lenses.