Exploring San Francisco’s Embarcadero with my iPhone 7 Plus

I often meet up with my friend Doug Kaye for a couple of hours of street photography in San Francisco. We often meet at San Francisco’s Ferry Building and head out from there along San Francisco’s Embarcadero towards Pier 24 (which is directly under where the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge heads out over the Bay).

Pier 24 — a beautiful space dedicated to photographic exhibitions — (one reviewer calls it “the quietly spectacular waterfront cathedral for photography“) has a new exhibition that recently opened titled “The Grain of the Present.” Pier 24 requires advance reservations which we had made a couple of weeks prior.

This particular exhibition “examines the work of 10 photographers at the core of the Pilara Foundation collection — Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Nicholas Nixon, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel, and Garry Winogrand — whose works share a commitment to looking at everyday life as it is.” It also features additional photography by Eamonn Doyle, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ed Panar, Alec Soth, Awoiska van der Molen, and Vanessa Winshi.

It’s quite a collection of beautiful work, and the opportunity to see it displayed in the beautiful space of Pier 24 makes for a great experience. If you enjoy great photography, do try to see this new exhibition at Pier 24, just remember that it requires you make a reservation a few weeks in advance. Pier 24’s reservation system helps pace visitor entry further enhancing the experience.

Along the way, both back and forth from the Ferry Building to Pier 24, we walked slowly — cameras in hand — and had fun capturing some moments of street photography. I had my favorite street photography camera long (a Fujifilm X100F) but I never pulled it out of the bag. I was only shooting using the camera in my iPhone 7 Plus. Sometimes I enjoy going very minimalist, and using just my iPhone puts me in that frame of mind!

Below are some example images shot on the iPhone 7 Plus, post-processed using the Photos app on the iPhone, and tweaked using Google’s Snapseed application — also on the iPhone. This was a totally iPhone photography day! Follow more of my street photography on Instagram.

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3 replies on “Exploring San Francisco’s Embarcadero with my iPhone 7 Plus ”

I always enjoy and am inspired by your photos. Do you still use your X70?

Phil, I do use my X70 from time to time but it’s clearly a backup camera. Primary cameras these days are either the X100F or the XPro2 – or my iPhone 7 Plus!

Scott, an article in the June 21 WSJ about THE END OF CAR OWNERSHIP reminded me of what you said in Paris about the next big revolution if you will being that we will no longer own cars, just order one up when we need it and it will show up at our doorstep. The article or collection of articles speaks to how ride sharing and self-driving vehicles are ging to redefine our relationship with cars which is exactly what you were saying almost a year ago.
I hope you are doing well. I am retiring in 3 weeks and looking forward to that. Phil