San Francisco, celebrated for its captivating landscapes, iconic landmarks, and ever-changing weather, often presents photographers with unique challenges and captivating surprises. On a foggy day far from what many would consider "ideal conditions," a group of passionate photographers gathered at Presidio. The group met at the parking of Battery Godfrey ready to embark on a photography adventure through the mystic Marin Highlands. The group introduced themselves to each other and then got ready to shoot the first location of the day, Golden Gate Bridge from the Battery Godfrey viewpoints.

There was a thick layer of low cloud which made it hard to shoot the obvious composition so we improvised and took the opportunity to zoom in and take some close up shots of the bridge with the fog. The group was getting familiar with manual modes and deciding shutter speeds for handheld shooting. We tried wide angle as well as telephoto lenses to take several pictures in the location.

The next location was fort point where we spent a few hours photographing the golden gate bridge with several different foregrounds such as chains, rocks by the sea side and broken fences. Here we tried focus stacking to get very close to the chains and have everything in the scene in focus. We then took a casual walk inside the fort to try some architecture photography and some people really enjoyed that style of photography. The bridge was still pretty much covered in fog so we spent a lot of time trying to create moody shots instead.

Now was the time to photograph the golden gate bridge from the other side towards the Marin Headlands. We met at the Moore Rd pier and photographed the bridge from two locations around the pier. We used ND filters to take long exposure shots here. A lot of photographers tried to use their polarizers to notice the difference in the colors with the use of a polarizer.

Our final location of the day was Rodeo beach where we were set to capture the sunset. Thick fog and clouds meant no sunset colors but it created another world mystic environment making the long exposure shots of the sea stack really intriguing. Here we experimented with different ND filters and different exposure timings to get different water streaks. Some photographers who were new to using tripods started getting comfortable with handling their cameras on a tripod.

Even though the weather was not ideal we as a group had a lot of fun and were able to create some frame worthy pictures.

Until Next Time,

Shriya and the rest of the Aperture Academy Team

P.S. If you'd like to join us at one of our workshops, you can find the schedule/sign up here.

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