Window on the Golden Gate, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Fort Point stands beneath the southern (San Francisco) end of the Golden Gate bridge. There was a fort built by the Spanish on the spot which Kit Carson liberated from Mexico in the war for California’s independence in the 1840s. The present fortification was constructed starting in 1853, and garisoned during the civil war, but not since. Joseph Straus, the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, altered the plans for the Golden Gate Bridge to spare Fort Point as a historic structure.

You may also recognize Fort Point as a location in the famous Hitchcock film Vertigo.

The dirty glass shown in this image covers a cannon embrasure on the second floor of Fort Point. It’s probably particularly dirty due to ongoing construction (earthquake retrofitting) on the bridge. I have no idea how anyone could have scaled the outside of this place to draw the smiley face. Perhaps it was done by a construction worker with access to ladders and scaffolding.

When I saw the embrasure, I snapped a few handheld photos. But they didn’t really work for me, even in the camera’s LCD. So I bit the bullet, did a bit of tripod manuevering and ballet, and was able to stop the camera down for maximum depth of field.

I like the different view of the Golden Gate, and the way the dirty glass becomes almost abstract. The glass could be a textile, or rear projection in a a theater.