San Diego Night Shots

My friend Marty and I got together on Tuesday evening for some night photography in San Diego. We had a couple of ideas we wanted to try out, and Heather was standing by with bail money just in case the second idea turned out to be a bad one.


Our first idea was to shoot the downtown skyline from the end of Harbor Island, and we found a nice spot near the old paddle wheel boat/restaurant. We even pulled out some flashlights and tried a bit of light painting on the rocks, trees and the paddle wheel boat.

Click here for more night time shots from San Diego.


Idea number 2, the one that had the potential to result in Heather having to find a bail bondsman in the middle of the night, was to find a place overlooking the airport, where we could get some shots of the runway lights all lit up. Years ago no one would have thought twice about 2 guys standing on a street corner on a hill overlooking the airport, with tripods and long lenses pointed down towards the incoming planes. Today. . . well, just ask those 2 Brits who are in trouble in India. We were directly under the landing path, and the planes were coming in from behind us right over our heads, and not all that high at that point either. I did not have a really long lens with me (Marty did), but still got a few shots. We decided that video would have been much more dramatic, and we're also thinking of trying this again when there is enough light to actually see the planes, not just the light trails. We think we may have spotted an even better vantage point too, so stay tuned for more in the future.