San Francisco is a city known for its stunning landscapes, iconic landmarks, and ever-changing weather. On an evening with ideal conditions, we met the group of enthusiastic photographers at the parking location by the marina. The sun was just setting so after a brief meet and greet and introductions we took our camera bags and tripods and started walking to the first spot of the night, The Palace of Fine Arts.

To shoot the blue hour at the palace of fine arts we set up our tripods with the goal to get some compositions with perfect reflection of the palace on the lagoon waters. We played around with several different compositions in both horizontal as well as vertical aspect ratios. Some photographers new to using a tripod started getting more comfortable with setting up and managing cameras on the tripods.

The next location of the night was Lombard Street. Here we went over the concept of wide vs narrow aperture and started experimenting with different apertures. Most of the photographers were using manual mode and setting the aperture and shutter time needed to capture some light trails from the vehicles driving down the windy Lombard street.

After spending several hours creating some of the most interesting light trail photos we headed to Embarcadero to capture some long exposure shots of the bay bridge. By the time we reached this location everyone in the group was fairly confident on their abilities to use the tripod and to use Aperture priority or Manual mode. Here we primarily used our wide angle lenses but some photographers also used the mid range lenses to capture street photos. Some people also tried making panoramas.

The final location of the night was across the Golden Gate Bridge, the Moore Rd pier. This was the only location with Golden Gate Bridge views. By the time we reached here some low fogs started rolling in which created a mystic interest to the entire scene. We look at several long exposure shots while trying to incorporate interesting foregrounds.

I had a lot of fun wandering through the city with the fun group and creating some beautiful images on the way.

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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