San Francisco Night Photography from an Unexpected Source

Well, well, well. The Geeky Guy (AKA my hubby) has become a shutterbug. To make a long story short, remember how I took that DSLR Beginners' Photography Class last summer with one of my favorite professional photographers, Chung Li? While I learned a lot and have applied much of it to my tiny point and shoot camera, since then I decided that I just wasn't interested in hauling around a camera bag full of equipment and lenses for two reasons:

1. It's heavy. Especially when I'm already hauling around my purse.
2. It can be too obtrusive when other professional photographers are already the official documentarians of an event I'm attending.

So, hubby took over the Canon T1i body I bought for the class and began collecting an assortment of lenses to go with it. He loves taking moon pictures and recently announced he was going to photograph birds that coming weekend. In our backyard. Um, we live in a city full of great parks several of which have lakes, streams and marshes and we're just a short hop to the ocean. All attract a wide assortment of birds. So really? Our backyard? Realizing he needed some prodding to broaden his horizons I recommended we stop in at a super cool photography studio called Aperture Academy.

CLICK to view the 360º virtual tour of Aperture Academy

While there are plenty of stunning photos to admire or purchase by Stephen W. Oachs, owner of Aperture Academy and an award-winning nature photographer himself, the cool thing is rather than just sell his work Stephen has chosen to educate. He, and his very qualified instructors, teach lots of photography field trip workshops around the Bay Area and beyond. There are also in-house classes for computer programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom so that students can learn to do their own post-edit on the shots they take at the workshops.

So we dropped by one afternoon and had the pleasure of meeting Stephen, the studio owner, and chatting with him about hubby's growing interest in photography. Right there on the spot hubby decided to sign up for a six hour, Night Owl's photography class later that week in San Francisco. He and a small group of amateurs went out with Stephen and another instructor from 6:00 till midnight and these are some of the raw images he shot that night:

The Golden Gate Bridge

With just a little adjustment in Photoshop he could softly bring out the water, waves and beach in the foreground of this Golden Gate Bridge shot.

The Palace of Fine Arts

Light Study on Lombard Street

The Bay Bridge from the San Francisco side of the Bay

The Bay Bridge from the Embarcadero

What do you think? I think it looks like I may soon have a second shooter to assist me at some future events with photos for my blog!

Along with learning shooting skills he had fun and photography is the first common interest we share. We don't like the same food, tv shows, movies or music (well, with the exception of INXS. We both love INXS). Sometimes people think it's odd we ever hit it off. But now, now we have photography and that's something we can do together wherever we are. What's especially great is I love taking macro (close up) detail shots and he likes taking scenic and distance shots so our styles will complement each other really well and I think we'll become a great shooting team.

Now I just need to upgrade my camera! Tomorrow I'll do an entire post about my new dream camera I'll be getting in a few months. And once I get it, we can take classes together at Aperture Academy!

CLICK HERE
to read all about the evening on the Aperture Academy Website