The last brick fortress.

The builders of Fort Point, America’s last brick fortress, were smart. Clearly aware of the power of deterrence, they made sure the world knew that a few shots from the battlements had sunk test targets with aplomb, with the result that no invader ever tried to steam down the channel into San Francisco Bay, now spanned by the Golden Gate bridge.

The Fort is closed Monday through Thursday to allow retrofit work to be carried out on the span of the Bridge above it. Entrance is free Fridays and weekends. As I wandered around the Fort on a beautiful morning, the sheer beauty of the brickwork suggested nothing so much as that the forbears of the artisans responsible doubtless built cathedrals and stately homes for their masters in Italy generations earlier.

The story.

The courtyard.

Cloistered landing.

Brickwork to die for.

Lone tourist.

Lovely, hazy morning light.

Cannon, once mounted on these emplacements, were never fired in anger.

The lighthouse.

Bricks galore.

The Fort is a National Park.

A fellow photographer was using a tripod and the Park guards seemed to have no problem with that. Handy for interior shots where the passageways are quite dark. I lucked out without one.

Nikon D3x, 24/2.8, 50/1.4 and 135/3.5 pre-Ai Nikkors.

Not easy.

Even the most casual of observers would have detected a distinct chill in the greeting I received from Bertram, the resident Border Terrier, on returning from the dog show at the Cow Palace in Daly City. Clearly yon Border’s nose confirmed his worst suspicions, namely that I had spent considerable time with others of the canine persuasion. Thus the chill. This is not an animal who believes in divided loyalties. I placated him, if placation was at all possible, with a fresh marrow bone which I had specially defrosted in advance of my return, expecting the worst, but mollified he most certainly was not. I don’t know if a beast with but one lip can actually sneer, but Bert did a very solid imitation of that emotion on grudgingly accepting the peace-offering.

That was only the first of my troubles. Rarely have I encountered worse light than in the aptly named Cow Palace, a vast arena set in one of the worst areas of the SF Bay Peninsula where it seems hockey games and the like are played in modern imitation of the blood sports at the Roman Coliseum of yore. The attendees, for the large part, appear to be direct descendants of forbears who got off on watching the occasional lion munching on the dismembered limbs of hapless Christians.

Now I had more or less prepared for the few fluorescent tubes, suspended 100 feet in the air, passing for illumination. The Nikon D3x with its respectable sensor – though no low light master like the one in the D700 – was accompanied by the fastest lenses in my modest arsenal. Two pre-Ai MFs, the 28/2 and 50/1.4, and the plastic fantastic, the 85/1.8 AF-D. All well-known and true. Little did I know that my frightful success rate would serve to embarrass me despite this cornucopia of all that is best and brightest in Nikkorland.

First, your subject moves. He moves a lot. He has the attention span of a politician on election day. Second, AF simply does not work. I switched quicker to MF on the 85mm than a pure bred would switch from scrag end to filet mignon. This was desperation time. Looking at the ‘proofs’, the first 100 snaps were pretty much a complete write off. The second 100 showed some signs of life with a winner or two, and the last 150 began to suggest that all was not over for this blog’s snapper-in-chief. Not a moment too soon, for some deep soul-searching had ensued, suggesting that maybe a career in taxidermy was a preferred option.

And here is what I managed to salvage from the whole near-catastrophe:

Mastiff and master.

Face time.

Kids’ choice.

Nap.

Dame Judy Dench dropped in.

Love.

Beauty.

Class.

A note on the Irish Wolfhound, last picture above. One of the oldest breeds known, dating back thousands of years, this truly magnificent animal stands some three feet tall at the shoulder. An adult weighs 180-200 lbs (male) or 120 lbs (female). Few breeds have such abundant reserves of warmth, charm and dignity as the wolfhound, married to a wonderful sense of humor. As the owner of the brother and sister pair above told me “When these dogs want to play, it does well to remember that a 200 lb. adult male barreling toward you at speed is not something with which you want to make contact!” I would be hard pressed to think of a more distinguished breed of dog. And one thing you will never have to do with a wolfhound is bend down to tickle his ear, for he will be all too delighted to proffer it at your height. You can tell me all day how smart your mutt is, but a pure bred dog is what dogs are all about.

Ever mischievous and looking for fun, the Irish Wolfhound in repose.

On the way out these worthies made their case for adoption:

Good intentions. Dumb agenda.

Sadly, they are letting their hearts rule their minds. First, every mutt adopted hurts the pure breds, leaving one pure bred unwanted. Zero sum game. Second, the key is prevention, not adoption. You don’t see too many pure breds at the adoption center and this is simply because they attract a different class of owner, one willing to make a decade long commitment. As with cell phones, the cost of entry is irrelevant to the economics of ownership. The cost of maintenance will swamp the cost of acquisition, nullifying the economic argument in favor of mongrels and half-breeds. Requiring that all mongrels be neutered at birth would solve the problem of more dogs than owners in one (dog) generation. Oh well.

Now I have to work on the pup to see if he will come around. Things are decidedly ‘iffy’ in our relationship right now.

All on the Nikon D3x, ISO 800, lenses as above, at or near full aperture, except for the last. The body was set to Auto white balance and appears to have done a fine job of neutralizing the ghastly fluorescent lighting.

Some more exploratory snaps.

Part I is here.

This time I approached it from ground level on the south-east side where the bridge spans Fort Point, the 1861 brick fortress built to repel invaders. Eager to give less often used lenses an airing, I took the 135mm pre-Ai Nikkor along with two old favorites, the 50/1.4 pre-Ai and the equally old 24/2.8, also pre-Ai. Whatever excuses need be made for the photography, none are required for these splendid optics. They simply do not make them like that anymore.

The area around the concrete bases in the bay looks interesting – that will need a boat to explore!

It looks like a favorite hangout for cormorants and gulls – this is an enlarged screenshot of the above:

Period detail is everywhere:

The original plans for the bridge called for historic Fort Point to be demolished, but Chief Engineer Strauss wisely decided to preserve it as one of the shining examples of brickwork architecture to be found in America. More of Fort Point in a later column. Thus the plans were revised and this smaller ‘bridge within the bridge’ was constructed to span Fort Point. You can clearly see how the two large diameter main catenary cables pass through the massive concrete abutments which keep them under tension. Now figure out how they tensioned the cables while waiting for the concrete to set …. Even the greatest fan of Nikon’s latest optics might agree that the ancient 1972 135mm f/3.5 Nikkor is a keeper – this will easily enlarge to any size you want:

Amateur fishermen ply their trade at the foot of the bridge. The 135mm does a lovely job of rendering a soft, yet recognizable, background. Not bad for all of $65:

A couple of years ago the ceaseless repainting of the bridge finally gave way to new technology with allegedly 50-year paint being used to save the taxpayer dollars. Healthy skepticism is called for here and the paint on the south-facing side of the south tower testifies to another municipal procurement scandal in the making – much like Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall NY administrations ensured that cables for the Brooklyn Bridge were wrongly specified, requiring a fivefold increase in the amount of wire used to make them sufficiently strong:

The complexity of the bridge-within-the-bridge structure can be seen here, photographed from atop Fort Point at the foot of the south tower. The beams are currently being strengthened by welding in additional gusset plates and using modern ductile steel, in the forlorn hope that when the Big One hits things will be left standing. Good luck with that. In any case, the ensuing tsunami will do to the Fort what the retrofit aims to prevent. Well, I suppose someone is cleaning up here.

It’s tough to make concrete look pretty at the best of times, but the builders gave it a shot here by adding the Art Deco touches to the top of the abutments. Sadly reminiscent of Nazi architecture at its gargantuan worst, it’s the best they could do and beats a flat top, I suppose. Wonder how those chunks came to be missing at the top:

Here’s the bridge-within-the-bridge spanning the enlisted men’s quarters at Fort Point. The sun was in the frame here, but the 24mm Nikkor seems to have done OK:

Conveying the sheer scale of the Golden Gate Bridge is not easy, but add a father and child in the frame and you start to get a sense of it:

It continues to mystify me why they used so many bolts and rivets. Lego Bricks made large:

This nice English chap engaged me in conversation. I told him just how fast the construction was back in the depths of the Great Depression and mercifully he did not remind me that England is full of far older artifacts, or I would have clocked him one, right after reminding him that everything is bigger and better this side of the Pond:

He obviously cared about his tats, these being about as fancy as it gets. Massive sectional enlargement from the above. This is where high pixel counts matter. And there’s no complaining about the D3x’s excellent manual focus confirmation technology, helped along by 40+ year old lenses!

Seventy years of paint drips. I’m signing this one ‘Andreas Gursky’ and asking $5 million for it:

One last parting snap:

All snapped on the Nikon D3x, using mostly the 135mm f/3.5 Nikkor-Q, at f/4 and f/5.6, as well as the 24/2.8 and 50/1.4 lenses of like vintage.

Part III is here.

Hanging on in quiet desperation ….

Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.8, AF-D, Fuji Velvia 50 effect from DxO Filmpack.