Balboa Park is beautiful place to walk around and shoot photography.  It is a historical site overlooking downtown San Diego, CA.  It is a great place to visit not only for photography, but museums, walking around, plays, and people watching.  Learn more about how the Looking Through the Gate photograph happened.

Balboa Park San Diego, CA

What a great place to go spend time.  It is over 1200 acres, was the site for the 1935-36 World’s Fair, and roots as far back as 1868 when the land was set aside.  Therefore, there many things to like about Balboa Park.  It is impossible to list them all here.  A link to Balboa Park Website gives an awesome history and talks about what is currently going on. 

Behind The Scenes

This image, titled “Looking Through the Gate” was taken in the fall of 2016 using black and white medium format film.  It was taken at night when there only a few people around. During the day this is a very crowded around it is almost impossible to ever get an image here without people in the frame.

Balboa Park is always busy and it is required to be patient if you want images that don’t have people in them.  It can be tricky to shoot in busy places, especially when you need a tripod.  Luckily, Balboa Park is always open.  Therefore, going and shooting at night makes it easier to photograph the scenes without people.  It also creates some interesting perspectives with the night lights and shadows that you don’t get during the day.  If you shoot at night, be prepared to use a tripod because you will definitely need longer exposure times.

Looking Through the Gate Balboa Park is part of a larger portfolio of mine where I explored the architectural highlights of the park.  The series was done in black and white to focus on the tones and shapes of this beautiful place.

Thank you for visiting my site, and I hope you enjoy the image.

This photograph is in my shop HERE.  Email me about availability and price.

black and white photograph ornate gate pillars behind night architecture urban city looking through the gate balboa park san diego ca

Looking Through The Gate at Balboa Park was shot using medium format black and white film and shows the amazing detail in even the gates around the park.

The Trip

It’s hard to have a bad trip to Balboa Park.  Therefore, this trip was a joy as the many others I took there.  Visiting this park at night is so interesting.  It is so fascinating to really study the architecture in ways that you can’t during the day.  The park is such a big place it is easy to see new things. As such, explore often at different times of the day.

For another photograph from this series, don’t miss my behind the scenes of Balboa Shadows Balboa Park.

More Fine Art Photographs

Don’t forget to look at the images on my site in the galleries starting at: https://mjvphoto.com/the-art/.  Hopefully you find some of them inspirational for your own photography adventures, or maybe you find an image you want to call your own.