Meet Karla

Fog is so common in San Francisco that it has a name. Or it had a name: Karl. Karl the Fog. Apparently there was even someone running an official Karl the Fog twitter account and website. Until it went dark. An entrepreneur picked up the slack and Karla moved to SF. Meet Karla. The fog. I've been photographing the fog at the Golden Gate Bridge since 2010 or 2011 so I've seen my fair share of foggy mornings at the GGB. This particular week had 2 in a row, which happens, but less frequently than the low fog happens. It's very rare to get both low fog and high clouds at the same time and this morning had called for both. Unfortunately the clouds were a bit late and didn't quite materialize in time, but we still had a beautiful morning. This is about the perfect level of fog. It's just high enough that it fills in the entire scene but low enough that it doesn't cover the city or too much of the deck of the bridge. It's my favorite when you can see the lights of the cars across the entire span of the bridge -- or at least the glow through the fog like this. The patterns the fog created are absolutely beautiful this morning and it was a crowded Hawk Hill to witness this. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: 32mm, f/9, 20 sec, ISO 320

Karla Comes to SF

Fog is so common in San Francisco that it has a name. Or it had a name: Karl. Karl the Fog. Apparently there was even someone running an official Karl the Fog twitter account and website. Until it went dark. An entrepreneur picked up the slack and Karla moved to SF. Meet Karla. The fog. It's quite rare that we get low fog and high clouds at the same time. It nearly happened one morning in October 2019 but the clouds didn't quite materialize in time. The next day we had glorious clouds but the fog rose too high at the last second and spoiled the attempt. So I took the 2 days and combined them for a fake "perfect event." The fog the first morning was doing wonderful things. It was right at "deck level", meaning we could still see just enough of the span of the bridge. It was dancing just above and below the deck all morning. And the fog shapes and bumps were wonderful. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: 40mm, f/14, 10 sec, ISO 200