Sunlit Temple
As the only survivor of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts echoes the grandeur of past times in a modern city whose defining character is progressive thinking and high technology. The Palace of Fine Arts resembles a Roman ruin with purely decorative purposes. It is in strong contrast to the hypermodern and functional Downtown but fits the diversity of San Francisco, a city that has room for everything, despite its small footprint.
The Palace is visible from many points in the city. It attracts curios visitors to its tranquil lagoon with fountain and swans and to its seemingly misplaced architectural style, reminiscent of Greek historical places.
How to get there
Palace of Fine Arts Map
Follow Highway 101 / Lombard Street / Van Ness Street north towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Take Baker Street shortly after Lombard Street turns right and becomes Richardson Avenue.
Take Marina Blvd if you are coming from the Marina or from North of the Golden Gate Bridge and turn right on Baker Street.
You will have to hunt for parking in any of the side streets. If you cannot find a spot, park across Marina Blvd on the large lot at 37°48’24.14″N 122°26’51.59″W.
Palace of Fine Arts areal photo
GPS position
How to photograph the Palace of Fine Arts
Palace of Fine Arts lawn
Using a wide-angle lens inside the structure, include people in your photographs to demonstrate the size of the building, the rotunda. Photographing inside will cause dynamic range problems, since the interior is several stops darker, especially on bright sunny days. Creating HDR photographs is one possible solution, but it is difficult due to the people in your photograph. You can generate an HDR from a single RAW frame or you can take several exposure compensated images and use software to remove people. Photo Acute Studio and Photoshop CS9 Extended both can automatically remove moving subjects from static frames. Floodlights illuminate the rotunda at night, causing much less dynamic range issues during the twilight hours.
Reflection
Evaluate the exposure on your histogram. If you photograph single exposures, expose for highlights by making sure the histogram is as far right as possible without clipping it at the right side. You can always recover shadows but clipped highlights are lost beyond the one stop you can recover during RAW processing.
Take your time to explore all the angles of the Palace and the surrounding landscape. Use a wide-angle lens and get really close to the pillars, crouch down and photograph up to create interesting distortions. Try to stand back further and use a normal lens to reduce distortions. Compare the results on your LCD to come up with new and intermediate ideas. Always experiment, even after you got all the shots you came for.
The lagoon works like a reflecting pool to the Palace. The sidewalk across the lagoon from the Palace offers some of the best options to explore reflections. Sometimes less is more. Using the reflections of the pillars together with the seagulls (or swans if you are lucky), we can let the imagination of the viewer fill in the gaps. Images like this are often most powerful, since people can choose for themselves how to fill the missing information. Imagination is often more powerful than reality.
Fountain
The lagoon is also home to a flock of swans. Stereotypical or not, swans are a welcome subject. They help to give the place a romantic touch and add to the mood of certain pictures.
During the summer months, a fountain will spew water several feet into the air. Use a tripod and set your camera to a small aperture to increase exposure time to 1/5 seconds or longer. Use a neutral density filter if it is too bright. This setting will create a blurred fountain look. Try a fast shutter speed as well (1/125s or faster) to freeze the waterdrops in the air. See which picture you like better.
Best Time of the Day and Best Season
Mornings are best to photograph the Palace with the lagoon in the foreground. During the afternoon, you have to shoot against the light. Late afternoon and evenings are good too.
Time required
You need at least 2 hours to walk around the lagoon and the structures, maybe longer to wait for the swans to move where you want them. It takes at least one hour to take a few interesting shots.
Equipment
- Wide-angle Lens
- Normal Lens
- Tripod and Cable Release
- Neutral Density Filter (blur the fountains during the day)
- Polarizing filter to remove the glare from the water
Difficulty Photographing
Usually there are too many people here making it hard to get decent photographs. Sometimes reconstruction crews are at work or wedding photographers stage their subjects in one of the archways. Be patient and flexible by working around those obstructions, focusing your attention on what is available to you, or including them skillfully into your photographs.
Close Locations
- Marina, Crissy Field
- Fisherman’s Wharf
- San Francisco Presidio
- Baker Beach
- Lincoln Park and Legion of Honor
- Stow Lake, Strawberry Hill, Botanical Garden
- Golden Gate Park West Side
- Beach and Cliff House
- Lands End and Sutro Baths
- Twin Peaks
- Pier 39
- Pier 7
- Fort Point
- Baker Beach
- Kirby Cove
- Golden Gate North Views part 1 and part 2
- Maritime Museum
- Fort Mason
Useful Resources
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2 Comments
One of those places I’ve gotta get to.
Finally something I’ve seen, albeit a very long time ago. Love the sunlit temple and the dramatic tree in the 2nd photo.