SF Chronicle Day 06

Yesterday I had my first assignment.  I was asked to take photos of trees.  Yes, Holman... TREES!

The story is about 193 trees that have been tagged for removal.  In their place a new dedicated bus lane will be built.  The thoroughfare in question is the two mile stretch of Van Ness Avenue from Lombard to Mission streets.

I went first thing in the morning and got three shots I was happy with in the first 15-20 minutes.  However, since this was sort of a test run and my only assignment for the day, I had been encouraged to stay out there and try to get as many shots as I could.

I roamed up and down Van Ness for a couple hours and talked to a few people on the street.  

I came back with 20 shots I was happy with and met with the editor, Brian Feulner, to review the images.  He picked his top images which had us narrowed down to 6 for submission. 

One of the six images was a long focal length shot that I used to compress several tagged trees that were on the median and curved up the road to make way for the left hand turn lanes for both the north and south facing traffic with a bus in the background.

Brian asked me to go back and get another shot with the same framing, but to try to get the bus more prominent in the photo.  

I went back and faced two challenges.  One, when shooting a moving target (the bus) I found that I was naturally tracking the bus.  In so doing, I was panning away from the row of trees.  I noticed this after the first bus went by, but it still two passing buses before I could force that habit out.

The second challenge was that on Saturday afternoon there are not a whole lot of commuter buses driving up and down Van Ness.  To get the bus large in the image, I needed the bus to be in the closer lane, but as we all know, most buses travel in the lane closest to the sidewalk (for obvious reasons).  

Finally an express bus came down the close lane at the same time another bus was at the sidewalk.  I got my shot and headed back to the office.

Here are the images that were selected.  My fave is the top right.  

Which is yours?

Which will run in the paper?