Highway 101 doesn’t start and end in Southern California – in fact, long after this post is written, we’ll be travelling the 101 heading north through Oregon. After leaving Santa Barbara, we settled on the town of Morro Bay for the night, before continuing on to San Francisco the following day.
Being from Australia, you would think a “big rock” would be kind of unimpressive, however Morro Rock, the backdrop (yes, visible from our RV window) for our evening was still an amazing place to set up camp.
(c) Luke Ballard
As we progressed north, we were constantly treated to amazing and picturesque landscapes. At one point we commented that it felt like we were driving amidst a combination of the Irish Coast, with Scottish Hills, Australian faming lands and a little bit of the Galapagos.
(c) Luke Ballard
(c) Luke Ballard
If you’re taking the coastal route, I strongly urge you to stop at the Elephant Seal colony for a look-see. While it appears that a whole bunch of Elephant Seals have washed up, dead on the beach – the reality is they are just very lazy and spend most of the time hanging on the beach kicking sand on themselves. Every now and again, a couple of them will head to the water for a wrestling match, and as long as I stood there – I could never figure out the reasons, etiquette or rules of the match. That didn’t take away from my enjoyment though.
(c) Luke Ballard
After a long and twisty-winding journey, we entered the Bay area and San Francisco. I like to think of San Francisco as a West-coast New York City. I get the same feeling from the city as I do from NYC – great bridges, bays and landscapes, good food, insane drivers and a lot of photographic opportunities.
(c) Luke Ballard
Speaking of bridges … Is the Golden Gate Bridge not one of the coolest landmarks in the world? So many times during the week I visited different areas around the bridge to make photographs.
On our first full day in San Francisco, we got out of the city. A friend from high school works for Apple in Cupertino. If you know me, then you know I’m an AppleGeek from way back. Brad invited Nicole and I to the Apple Campus and we enjoyed lunch in the most awesome staff cafeteria ever at 1 Infinite Loop. On top of getting to visit the Luke version of Mecca, it was great to catch up with a friend from long ago.
(c) Luke Ballard
Another friend we caught up with is Audrey. We first met Audrey in 2011 on a trek through Patagonia and the friendship not only survived arduous walking, mountains, pain, blisters and me getting carried out on a horse, it flourished throughout a weekend of Bay weather, Napa wines and photography.
(c) Luke Ballard
Following Audrey’s suggestion we visited “Off the Grid” for dinner on Friday. With live music and food trucks surrounding the area, you’d think it was a festival – but no, it’s just another Friday night in Frisco. Recommendations if you do get to “Off the Grid” include ‘The Chairman,’ ‘Bacon Bacon,’ and ‘Rockos.’
(c) Luke Ballard
Our classes this weekend were amidst the wonderful backdrops of the Golden Gate Bridge (happy sigh) and Fisherman’s Wharf. As always our classes were a lot of fun and our key focuses this week were in the controlling and manipulating of both light and time. A good photographer can do both of these things with ease!
(c) Luke Ballard
We were extremely privileged during our Night Photography class to have a good friend of mine, Jason, come and join us. Jason is an exceptional night photographer and captures amazing images of the Milky Way and night sky. Stay tuned for the next blog for us to share some great night images.
(c) Luke Ballard
Monday was my day off – and what a day off it was. Audrey, Nicole and I jumped in the car and headed to the picturesque Napa Valley. As an Australian with some exceptional wine regions under my belt (Hunter, McLaren, Barossa) I am extremely hard to please. We visited a number of vineyards and had both positive and negative experiences. The wine at Robert Mondavi was hit and miss – usually I am a fan of the reds and not so much on the whites – but in this case, I didn’t enjoy their red wines. Their Fume Blanc however was exceptional and well worth trying.
We visited the Frank Family vineyard and while the wines were okay, we conscientiously objected by not purchasing anything other than our tasting. I don’t understand the point of charging for a wine tasting – I know that in the Hunter I have rarely done so, because a free and very small tasting is usually enough to make me buy in quantity. If a vineyard has a tasting fee, that’s fine – but subtract it from the cost of purchase if the customer does buy wine. That makes sense, right?
(c) Luke Ballard
When we brought this up with our sales host at Frank Family, he shrugged and explained that Rich Frank’s philosophy is “if you can’t afford $20 or $30 for a tasting and the wine on top, he probably doesn’t want you here.” Yeah, we were turned off a little bit.
Richard Frank, who goes by Rich is according to our wine host, all about making the money and not so much on anything else. It was enough to make us not purchase anything despite enjoying the sample we had paid for.
Our most positive experience was at Alpha and Omega where Joe looked after us exceptionally. We were even invited to try wine not yet bottled from the barrel – the Era 2012 was great, but it was the older brother – the Era 2011 – that really stood out.
If you enjoy red wine, you’ll probably agree with us that this is one of the nicest reds you could possibly taste.
(c) Luke Ballard
We’re heading now to Yosemite National Park and then up the 101 (California and Oregon coasts) before teaching this weekend in Portland.
We’ll let you know if we get there or decide to never leave Yosemite and just keep taking photographs for the rest of our lives.
See you next week! I hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend!
Luke
(c) Luke Ballard
(c) Luke Ballard
(c) Luke Ballard
(c) Luke Ballard
(c) Luke Ballard
The post On the Road with Luke Ballard: Photography Workshops (part 16) appeared first on Resource Magazine.