Twin Peaks

Author's Comments

Twin Peaks is the overlook I recommend when someone has one clear evening in San Francisco and wants to understand the shape of the city. Market Street runs straight at you from the Ferry Building, an axis you can trace with a finger, and the grid pulls the eye all the way to the Bay Bridge lights beyond. It is a geography lesson and a photograph at the same time. Blue hour is the window. Sunset itself is often less interesting than the twenty minutes that follow, when the sky still holds color and the city lights come up to meet it. Get there early, set the tripod, and wait. The wind is constant and cold in every season, so the jacket is not optional. I avoid summer. The marine layer that makes San Francisco famous also makes Twin Peaks disappear for weeks at a time, and there is nothing more deflating than climbing to the top of the city to photograph the inside of a cloud. Fall and winter give the cleanest air and the sharpest skyline. On the right January night after a storm has passed, the visibility goes absurd and you can see across to the East Bay hills. The Christmas Tree Point lot is where the tour buses stop and where most of the photographs get made. It is a fine vantage, but crowded. The trails up to the actual summits are a short climb and almost always quieter, and the angle shifts just enough to feel like your own composition rather than everyone else's. On a foggy evening when the marine layer is spilling over the ridge in that slow, weightless way it has, the summits are where you want to be.

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