VISUAL CITY
San Francisco these days is a city in flux. But it also knows how to be still, even just for a moment. So much about the city — the history, the people, the climate —is a photographer’s dream, dense, rich, stacked-up, and camera-ready. The Frisc wants to tell San Francisco’s stories through pictures, as well as with words, so we’ll feature some of our favorite street photographers from time to time.
If you have a favorite or want to show us your work, you can reach us in various ways.
Our debut photographer to spotlight is Jessica Christian, photo editor and sole staff shooter at the San Francisco Examiner. She started pursuing photography in high school, but “didn’t consider it as a career until I got to San Francisco State University and was introduced to their journalism program,” she says.
What does Christian see that stands out in SF? “I feel like whenever I’m consciously going out to find street scenes, I never turn up with anything I like. It’s almost one of those things where if I don’t think about it, things will just appear in front of me, and I’ll know when the moment is right to take a photo.”
She’s also a lover of the marine layer. “Aside from the daily street scenes I focus on, I’m in a deeply committed relationship to San Francisco’s fog. I’ve lived here for seven years and every time I see the fog swirling above Sutro Tower, or a huge wall of it engulf the Sunset, I get a little bit emotional. One day I’ll have a whole coffee-table book full of fog images. I don’t think I’ll ever stop chasing it.”
@KarltheFog, you have a friend for life.
All images by Jessica Christian. Jessica would like to dedicate this post to the memory of her great-aunt, Carolyn Elaine Davis Caldeira, whom her family called Sandy.
Follow Jessica Christian on Twitter @jachristian and on Instagram.