Let’s stay around the Golden Gate Bridge a little while longer, shall we? After exploring its beautiful structure last week, I’d like to show another aspect of the bridge’s surroundings: the visitors.

I took the pictures I’m using today quite a while ago. I remember being on my way to leaving the site, the light was slowly decreasing, and I kept on turning around to take a few more pictures before it was too late. At one point, I was struck by how interesting the silhouettes of all the other people taking pictures were (you may notice that selfie sticks thankfully weren’t a thing yet). Doesn’t it look like a shadow theater? Every time I see it, Shakespeare pops into my mind: all the world’s a stage. I did try to play with typography and mix the image with those words, but so far, everything I’ve tried has been… underwhelming.

Another picture I took the same day has the same king of structure, with a little peekaboo of the Golden Gate itself.

I like how they look together, so I mixed them in a single image until the difference of scale was no longer a problem. It looks tiny because of panoramic format, but just clic to see it bigger!

If you’re curious, here are the original unretouched pictures.

I don’t think I’m done with exploring the color and texture options of this image yet, but I’ll leave it at that for this week.

In fact, I used one of the pictures before in an illustration you can see here. Honestly, I was that close not to give you the link because, wow, that image makes me cringe even though it’s not terribly old. I’ll take it as another proof that progress is always possible, so hopefully, the next iteration will be even better!