On this breezy beautiful Friday evening in San Francisco, our group of photographers met a few miles north of the Golden Gate bridge. We talked about our planned stops for the night, introduced ourselves and talked about some of the workshop goals, which included making sure everyone got “print worthy” images they very happy with. Looking forward to the evening’s adventure ahead, we all loaded up and headed for our first shooting location.

The first stop was beautiful the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, built in 1915. As it was not yet sunset when we arrived, we had time to wander the gorgeous grounds, shoot underneath the dome and be up close with the giant columns. As sunset drew closer, we moved to the other side of the lagoon to shoot a larger scene that included the famous palace dome and the lagoon as the foreground. With light fading, longer exposures allowed us to attain beautiful shots of the palace reflecting in the water with clear blue hour skies in the background.

As daylight faded, we moved to our next stop, the crookedest street in the world. On Lombard Street, we talked about techniques and compositions, including how to shoot light trails of the passing cars. In smaller groups, we shot from multiple vantage points, as we watched all the cars go by. Our photographers created great images shooting uphill, shooting downhill and even shooting Coit Tower lit up in the distance.

Next, we were off to the Embarcadero. Along the waterfront there are some great old pilings in the San Francisco Bay that make for great for a compositional element as we looked across at the dancing lights of the Bay Bridge light display. On the Embarcadero, there are always interesting things to shoot, as well. Tonight, the tide was low, the pilings were high and the weather was great. This allowed for great long exposure photography of the Bay Bridge, the bay and lots of vehicle traffic on the Embarcadero. Just before leaving we were treated to the moon rising underneath the bridge in a reddish hue, a very pretty sight. Just after 11 PM, we finished up and began moving to the final stop of the night, the always impressive Golden gate Bridge!

In Sausalito, we continued to work on ideas around exposure and composition from different viewpoints of the Golden Gate Bridge. Everyone was getting great shots tonight and we stayed past midnight as the group kept finding new images to create.

And just like that, our workshop was already over. Time flies when you’re having fun. The happy photographers packed up their camera bags and headed to their homes and hotels to catch up on sleep. No doubt they will be scrolling through their images before bed tonight to see great results. I am confident everyone left with print worthy images.

Until Next Time,

Kevin 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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