Photographing San Francisco: Digital Field Guide

One of the reasons why San Francisco is one of the top tourist destinations in the world is the stunning combination of the physical landscape and lived environment of our city. For that reason it’s understandable that a full-length instructional manual, Photographing San Francisco by Bruce Sawle, would be written for our fair city.

The book contains 28 chapters, each devoted to a photogenic location within our city. Some of these chapters are written about individual neighborhoods like North Beach, Chinatown and Downtown (the Financial District and Civic Center). Others are dedicated destinations like our city’s museums or destinations in Golden Gate Park like the Conservatory of Flowers, the Japanese Tea Guard, the Windmills, and the Japanese Tea Garden.

Each chapter explains why it’s worthwhile photographing at each location, what are the best positions from which to take a picture, and what is the ideal equipment to employ. The author suggests the best times of day to capture picture the perfect picture. Each image shown in the book gives information about ISO, the aperture, shutter speed and the write lens to use.

A guide like Photographing San Francisco provides the novice photographer with guidance to master the medium of digital photography. While these exercises will take you to the City's famed beauty spots touted in all tourist guides, it can help the photographer to see the city with fresh eyes and use it as a palette to hone ones craft.


Photographing San Francisco: Digital Field Guide by Bruce Sawle (Wiley, 2010).