San Francisco Bay Area Photography

40 Miles north of San Francisco, tucked away in beautiful Marin is a little town called Inverness.  Calm bay water and very little local traffic make this an ideal weekend location.  There were a birthday party and an old man with fishing rod and a golden retriever when we arrived.

Owned and operated by NCGA (Northern California Golf Association), Poppy Ridge is a popular course for a number of NCGA related qualifiers. I played there for the second time in my short golf life on June 16th.

As beautiful as the course may appear to be, it’s a monster of a course. The tolerance level for any inaccuracy is so low that nothing but a perfectly executed shot has any chance of seeing a par for the hole.

Here is the 9th hole on Merlot - a par 5 with a severely elevated tee shot:

And the 9th hold of Chardonnay - another par 5 with hazard to the right and water to the left of the hole:

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Another shot of China Camp State Park in San Rafael.  This one was taken with Nikon F4s on a Velvia 100 slide film - took me a while to get it processed and scanned.  Color saturations and high contrast is mainly due to the film itself.

I was looking for website with more information on this place. . .it’s funny, the best one I could find is Yelp:

China Camp State Park Reviews

This is a shot of Emeryville taken from Berkeley Marina shortly after sunset.  Thanks to telephoto lens, downtown Oakland is seen on the last layer.  I chose cooler white balance to intensify the blues.  The shutter was left open for 8 seconds.

(click photo for larger view)

Spring time in Northern California. From Baker Beach, San Francisco, I saw a bed of ice plants leading to Golden Gate Bridge. I was itching to use my film camera, Nikon F4s loaded with Fuji Velvia 100 slide film, hence the over saturation and contrast.

(click photo for larger view)