Two weeks ago I participated in the Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk, where photographers got together in groups of up to 50 in cities around the world for street photography and socializing. Instead of going to a nearby photo walk in San Jose or Morgan Hill, I decided to drive up to San Francisco for the Crissy Field walk. San Francisco has no shortage of great places for photography, but the Crissy Field area is one of the best, with beaches, the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Marina District all within photo range.

I left home at 9am to make the 10am meet up time. After a quick group shot, and we went off for two hours of walking & photography before meeting up for lunch. My friend and fellow photographer Richard Bui was also at this photo walk, and so we walked around together. I had a wide-to-mid-range lens on my camera, while his two bodies had more tele lenses, so we ended up taking fairly different photos even though we were together most of the time.

We first walked along the beach:

The Golden Gate Bridge made a nice backdrop for some shots, though the fog sometimes made it hard to see:

We then turned inland to meet up with everyone for lunch.

After lunch, Richard and I decided to take a different route back to our cars so that we could photograph the Palace of Fine Arts on the way.

Here’s a shot of Richard posing for me, with the Palace of Fine Arts in the background:

The Palace of Fine Arts is also a great subject for trying out different post-processing techniques, including HDR

and various Photoshop plugins.

Finally, as I was almost back to my car, I couldn’t resist taking a few more shots with Alcatraz in the background:

You can see all my photos from the photo walk at Scott Kelby’s Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk.

Richard also got many excellent photos, including this nice shot of me:

You can see the rest of Richard’s photos from the walk at 2009 Scott Kelby 2nd Annual World Wide Photo Walk.