Most people know Lombard Street as the “the crookedest street in the world”, but it’s also a major thoroughfare for US-101 traffic going to and from the Golden Gate Bridge. Given that I started my California life in the North Bay, Lombard has always felt like the gateway to San Francisco for me. Whenever I return from a trip up north, it’s not until I’m driving along Lombard that I feel like I’m home.

I’ve always thought the view looking west down Lombard from Larkin was particularly expansive. It’s up on the side of Russian Hill, so one can see from Van Ness all the way to Richardson Ave unobstructed. The other night I decided to head out there with my tripod and try my hand at another time-lapse video. I started around 10 o’clock and took pictures until my camera battery died an hour and a half later.

When I got back home and stitched the images into a video, I discovered an unintentional artifact. Because I’d zoomed the camera all the way in on Lombard, its attempt at nighttime auto-focusing caused slight fluctuations in the focal length (I assume) creating an odd pulsating effect in the video. Not what I had expected, but a happy accident, as it mated especially well with the beat-heavy techno track Stephanie created for me using Looptastic on her iPhone.