OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

SONY RX1R III

Oakland City Hall at sunrise

A few months ago, I found myself in the Bay Area for a quick overnight and hotel rooms in San Francisco were outrageously priced. So, I stayed across the bay in a room with a front-row view of Oakland’s City Hall with its distinctive clock tower. Completed in 1914, it’s a beautiful example of American Beaux-Arts architecture and stands in contrast to the more modern buildings around it.

I was jet-lagged and up before dawn, so I was able to enjoy the view from my window as the sun rose over the East Bay hills and bathed the scene in a hazy golden light. This is one of the first frames I captured with the recently released and somewhat controversial Sony RX1R III. I don’t have a judgment yet myself, other than it’s really nice to shoot with that lovely 35mm lens again. It’s a focal length that just agrees with the way I see the world.

Hi. I’m Duncan Davidson. I’m currently Senior Vice President of Platform Engineering at Webflow. Previously, I served as Vice President of Developer Productivity and Technical Advisor to the CEO at Shopify. A long time ago, I created Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant.

I’m also a photographer. Notably, I covered the main stage for TED Conferences from 2009 to 2016. These days, my photography work is strictly for myself and I try to write about it here on this site as much as I do technical topics.