Just east of San Rafael in California’s Marin County lies China Camp State Park. It’s a beautiful setting on the west side of San Francisco Bay and delights with a number of stunning Bay views. Among the more interesting spots is the China Camp Village – site of this dock, a beach area, picnic tables and the Quan Bros. snack shop (open on weekends). It’s a delight – and a wonderful place for photography.
I had some used lenses to try out that I’d gotten from my late friend Chris Gulker and decided to head to China Camp for the first time to try them out. This particular image, however, was taken with my trusty Canon 5D Mark II looking down the dock at China Camp Village. I post-processed it using Lightroom 4.3, Photoshop CS6, and Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 filters. I purposely subdued the tone of the image a bit to an almost film like quality – preferring this version to the brighter one I originally shot as it came straight out of the camera.
Note: Lots of photographers use neutral density filters to smooth the water via a long exposure setting. Here’s a great example of one of those kinds of images – shot by Swee Oh on a recent long exposure photo walk. I don’t yet own a neutral density filter – so this shot is just a normal one with the subtle waves showing in the Bay water.