Napa, CA

This past Presidents Day weekend I was able to join some online photography friends from OpenSourcePhoto in Napa, CA for some workshops and model shoots. I left S. CA after work on Thursday night and pretty much drove all night with a just a couple stops to sleep. I got to San Francisco around 5:45 a.m. which gave me some time to get some shots of the Golden Gate at sunrise. After spending a couple hours on that, I had a bunch of time to kill so I drove around Sausalito for a little while then headed up to Healdsburg to kill a few more hours. I got to Napa around 3:30 p.m. and waited around for a couple hours before I connected with anyone from our group. We sat around for a while then some went to dinner. I was exhausted so I went to our room and tried to get settled in. I had the opportunity to room with three great photographers and business people, Shaun Austin from California, Kevin Swan from Indiana, and Nathan Holritz from Tennessee.

Saturday morning I got to go to church with my family in Calistoga then got to hang out for the afternoon. Saturday evening I rejoined the photography part of my trip for some classroom type learning then off to a night shoot in downtown Napa. The police only showed up once to figure out what a large group of people were doing wandering around town. Luckily he didn't question us too much and was on his way.

Sunday morning included more shooting and workshops and Monday was the day to say good bye and head home. I left Napa around noon and got home at about 7:30 p.m.. It was a great weekend but I was very glad to be home.

A special thanks to Jen and Chris Stewart, Tana Huffman, ProDPI, Pixel2Canvas, Robin Pesa, Colin Michael, Shaun Austin, Kevin Swan, Nathan Holritz, Kevin King, Jillian Kay, and all the models for making this weekend a success for all of us.

I'll break this post up into a few days so check back later for more. These first four were from the night shoot in downtown Napa.