San Francisco genuinely is really foggy. It’s not a joke. The fog rolls in from the Pacific and floats up against the beach, stacking up above Twin Peaks until it drops like an ephemeral avalanche onto the city below … blasting through the Golden Gate as if sprayed from a fire extinguisher, erasing the Bridge, obscuring Alcatraz, turning Berkeley into an overcast Pacific Northwest knockoff even as it leaves Oakland in bright, shining California sunlight.
It’s a thing.
Lorenzo Montezemolo’s favorite place to experience it is from Mount Tamalpais, which provides a commanding view from just north of the city. Seen from the summit at 2,576 feet, the fog rolls through in waves to envelop the region like a shroud. "I think there’s a little bit of Sleepy Hollow to it," he says.
Montezemolo grew enamored by the city's ubiquitous fog after moving the Bay Area 18 years ago to work as a network engineer. The fog was particularly thick this August, and he developed something of an obsession. Each day after work, Montezemolo drove an hour north from San Mateo to Mount Tamalpais State Park to photograph it.
He snapped hundreds of photos, but none quite like this one, made on August 17 during the full moon. He and a few friends hiked a steep gravel trail to a point about 1,000 feet above the fog. Montezemolo put his Nikon D810 on tripod and set to work. He used an F8 aperture and a low ISO of 31, together with a six-stop neutral density filter that let him stretch the exposure to three minutes.
Montezemolo's stunning image shows one of the Bay Area's most enchanting features, one that rivals that iconic orange bridge for its beauty.
