Some vacation photos capture a place. Others quietly leave you a challenge for your future self.
This photograph, taken from the top of San Francisco’s famous Lombard Street in 1983, has become the latter for me.
At the time, I was a kid looking down a ridiculously steep San Francisco street, camera in hand, capturing whatever caught my attention. I certainly wasn’t thinking about composition, architectural styles, historic homes, or the layers of a city disappearing into the fog. I just knew the view was worth a picture.
More than four decades later, I look at it very differently.
More than four decades later, Lombard Street remains one of San Francisco’s most recognizable landmarks. The famous crooked section features eight hairpin turns surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens. San Francisco Travel has a helpful guide to visiting Lombard Street today, but my next visit would be less about checking off the landmark and more about slowing down to photograph everything I missed the first time.
Today, this photograph makes me want to return to Lombard Street with one very specific mission: find this spot and deliberately recreate the photograph.
I’d love to stand where my younger self stood, hold up the original image, and start matching the pieces. Which houses are still there? Which trees have grown beyond recognition? What has disappeared? What tiny details have somehow survived all these years?
But this time, I wouldn’t stop after taking the picture.
I’d slow down.
I’d photograph the architecture of the homes lining Russian Hill—the windows, doors, rooflines, stairways and little details I probably never noticed in 1983. I’d spend time with Lombard Street’s famous landscaping, photographing the flowers and greenery instead of simply seeing them as scenery surrounding those eight crooked turns.
And, knowing me, I’d probably come home with far too many photographs of doors.
That may be my favorite thing about revisiting childhood vacation photographs. They don’t simply remind me where I’ve been. Sometimes they reveal how differently I would experience the same place today.
The kid who took this picture saw an incredible view.
The photographer I am today wants to go back and discover everything hiding inside it.
The photographer I am today wants to go back and discover everything hiding inside it. That change in perspective is one of the reasons I love travel photography. If you want to become more intentional about the photographs you bring home, explore my Travel Photography Tips for practical ideas you can use on your next trip.
Throwback Thursday question: If you could recreate one photograph from a childhood vacation, where would you go?
