Silicon City - San Francisco - a photo on Flickriver

The 50 miles (80km) between San Francisco and San Jose California is known as Silicon Valley, the world's center of high technology, but San Francisco is becoming 'Silicon City', as I'll describe below. This is the Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge is to the right of this view. No HDR.

Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!

See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/420449750...

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Settings etc.:
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Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @24
1-minute exposure @F18 (pushing it but it looks fine at full-res)
1-LEE soft ND grad 0.9 (100x150mm) (2 grads with bright lights creates reflected lights)
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 50
Small Slik tripod with Manfrotto pistol grip ball head
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
Sturdy hiking boots to keep from falling off the hill
(This is to the left of most shots taken here to get the full 2x3 ratio frame!)
I was literally hanging off the cliff to get this perspective.

It is amazing how many high technology companies are located in Silicon Valley.

Apple, NetFlix, Quora, Cisco and Juniper (the backbone of the internet), Google, YouTube, Facebook, Adobe (Photoshop, PDF files), Intuit, Tango, LSI Logic, Symantic, Nvidia, Hewlet Packard, eBay, PayPal, Yahoo, Palm, Intel (in almost every computer), AMD and Applied Materials (the rest of the chips inside nearly all computers), turntable.fm (crack for the head) vmWare (virtual servers), Appcelerator (a great app dev. framework), Y-Combinator (The birthplace of numerous startups), Mozilla (Firefox browesr), Pandora (Internet radio in Oakland), Sun Microsystems, SmugMug photo website hosting and sharing, LinkedIn (the biggest corporate social networking site),Oracle (#1 database company), monster.com, Bloom Energy, Tesla Motors, Genentech, and many more.

But San Francisco is home to hundreds of high-tech startups and and better known companies such as Flickr, Twitter, SalesForce (cloud computing) Wikimedia (wikipedia), Zynga (80 million users play farmville etc.), UStream, Metacafe, DropBox, RapLeaf, Blurb (photo books), Dolby Labs, Stumbleupon, Digg (THE way to go viral on the internet until Reddit (Also in SF) came along), Craigslist (the biggest want-ad website with local versions around the world), Yelp (recommendations on restaurants and other things, soon worldwide), Autodesk, (the leading computer design software company), Typekit, QuantCast (Web analytics), Twilio, Square(mobile payments), GitHub, Riverbed,Heroku (cloud computing/online customer database systems), Second-life (the biggest online virtual reality game played by over 800,000 people around the world). And let's not forget Wired Magazine....etc...etc..

Genentech, Lucasfilm and Pixar are also within a few miles of where I took this shot.

There is an energetic feel to this place that is hard to describe, but perhaps a view from this spot is the best way to show it in a photograph.

Okay, this really is the last upload of the year. So I hope you have a great holiday season. I have some nice seascapes from my Big Sur summit meetup with Ivan Makarov to start off the new year.

The map shows exactly where this is. It is another place not for the faint of heart!

See my Flickr profile for a link to my newly designed website.

Resources:

Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr

Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235

Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif

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Taken in: United States / California / San Francisco (show map)

Taken on: December 18, 2009

Tags:

landscape

seascape

city by the bay

silicon valley

bay bridge

coit tower

transamerica pyramid

Bank of America Building

travel

vacation

bay

sky

skyscraper

city

skyscraper city

california

usa

apple

cisco

juniper

google

sun microsystems

hewlett packard

facebook

twitter

palm

ebay

paypal

yahoo

intel

amd

oracle

vmware

wired

magazine

flickr

blurb

heroku

salesforce

riverbed

second life

autodesk

craigs list

yelp

canon

mkii

5dmkii

smugmug « less

Sets appears in: • 1000-4000+ Faves • 50,000-99,999 Views more » • Top10_2010 • San Francisco Area « less

Groups appears in: • 100 Club (All pics must have been 'Favorited' at least 100 times • 500 Favourites more » • *GreatPixGallery 300 Faves+ • 300 Big Ones • 500 favorites and more • 1000 Faves • San Francisco Bay Bridges • 1.000+ Faves • World100F – The QualityGroup • Chapeau! (invited only) • Favorites: 300 • Skylines of the World • California Photographer • ~ Flickr's Finest (100+ Faves Only) ~ • Proudly hanging in 40-49 galleries • Stuck On Earth Community « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, f/18.0, 92 sec, 40mm, ISO 50 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Aperture:	f/18.0
Exposure Time:	92
Focal Length:	40mm
ISO:	50
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Unknown (9)
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows
Show full info

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