A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
1 October 2018
We'd walked from downtown to North Beach, which is uphill all the way. So when we finally sat down, we were going to eat. We just had to find a welcoming restaurant.
That's no problem in North Beach. It never has been.
On the same block across from Washington Square, one of San Francisco's oldest parks at age 171, you can pop into either the very casual Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store for a $13 fagassa sandwich or the more formal Original Joe's for a $19 shrimp louie.
You can spend more, you can spend less.
But what interested us was the thought of sinking into a soft leather bench in a raised booth. So we got a table at Joe's. And that shrimp louie.
But before it came, we took our camera bag off, untied our seater and slid into the booth. We ordered a glass of white wine and, while we waited for it, revived ourselves with the ice cold water.
There is nothing, we think, that quite hits the spot as a glass of cold water.
And as we were reviving, the bread came in a metal basket, wrapped in a white cloth napkin as it has appeared on tables for decades and decades.
We had to admire it, we couldn't help it. So we took out our camera and snapped a portrait at f8, 1/15 second (with a stabilized body) and ISO 1600.
Look at that bread. There is no finer sustenance on earth. Butter it if you must, you won't improve it.
Really, it was all we needed.