Home > Behind the Image: Two More Minutes in the Rain
Behind the Image: Two More Minutes in the Rain
A Golden Gate Reflection Nikon F5 with an 80 mm lens at f2.8, exposed for 1/60 second on Fuji Velvia 50 ASA film By Abrahm Lusgarten
During the course of my career as a professional photographer, I’ve had the opportunity to shoot exotic people, places, and events in all corners of the world, from Nepal and Thailand to Costa Rica and Morocco. In the Rajastan region of North India, soulful ethnic faces framed themselves amidst the radiant colors of traditional garb in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. All I had to do was point the camera—I couldn’t go wrong.
When you see so many fantastic scenes though, you can start to take it for granted. Before you know it, you think that the best photos originate only in distant lands yet to be explored. In reality, it doesn’t matter whether you’re touring barns in the American mid-west or trekking in the Andes. Great images are everywhere, provided you take the time to look.
With the above theory in mind, I decided to take a walk on a cold rainy winter day around my home city of San Francisco—a place I rarely
photograph. The wind was blowing, and the light looked anything but
fantastic—a dull, oppressive gray that barely differed from the thick clouds floating just a few hundred feet above.
Sheathed in a heavy Gore-Tex shell better suited for a mountain trek than an urban walk, I set off into the Presidio, an old army base turned National Park at the city’s northwestern edge. In the Presidio the rich history is almost palpable as you walk through Eucalyptus groves and abandoned barracks. I wanted to find a picture of San Francisco that people would recognize, but one that defied cliché and captured the city's sense of times past as well.
No one else was out walking in the rain, so portraits were out of the question. Instead, I turned my attention to the architecture, honing in on the flaking paint chips and the worn garnet brick of the surrounding buildings, and the eerie, prison-like structures at Fort Point underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. I shot a few frames here and there, but nothing really excited me.
Frustrated, though refreshed from the walk, I called it quits. Then, as I walked back to my car, a reflection caught the corner of my eye. I almost kept going, then said to myself, "Ah, why not. What's two more minutes in the rain?" So I stepped back a few feet and snapped this last picture of the day—a new version of the city’s ubiquitous landmark as it might be have been seen by an army lieutenant as he walked past the window to his office, equally captured by the same image on one rainy day many years ago.
Abrahm Lustgarten in an internationally published, award-winning
photojournalist whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and Men's Journal magazines. He most frequently covers social, travel and outdoor adventure subjects, and is a regular contributor to Away.com. You
can see more of his work at www.abrahm.com
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