DATES:

March 31, May 5, 2012 - Open

Spend a fun and creative day walking through San Francisco's Chinatown and photographing the variety of sights, people, children playing, musicians, architecture, murals, markets, men playing checkers, a fortune cookie factory and more.

In the 1840s and 1850s, China was an inhospitable place to live. To escape the floods, droughts, rebellion and civil war, many Chinese who had heard of the "Golden Mountains" in California left China to seek their fortunes. Thousands of Chinese, most of them from the Guangdong Province in southern China, made their way to the gold fields. They met with suspicion and prejudice from other miners and many of them soon came back to San Francisco where jobs could be found and a familiar culture had taken root. Like many other immigrant groups, the Chinese met with suspicion and envy from the "natives". Oppressive laws were passed that limited the jobs they could have, assessed exorbitant license fees on the ones they could work in and excluded them from giving testimony in court against a white man. Some of these laws persisted until World War II. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, when all the birth records were burned, many Chinese were able to get citizenship by claiming they were born here. The fire also destroyed the rickety wood tenements that existed at the time. The new buildings you see today are American architects' ideas of what Chinese buildings should look like.

Chinatown can be described in two words- exotic and colorful. You will learn to take candid, street photos and how to approach people to ask permission to photograph them. We will visit an herbal pharmacy and photograph the pharmacists weighing and preparing their mysterious herbal medical remedies. We will also practice panning and creative lens zooming.

Cost is $150, which includes photo instruction and follow up written photo critique.

Lunch is not included. Please contact us for details. Please note, tag alongs are not permitted. Tour limited to 6 participants. We will meet at 8:30am and finish about 2pm.

"Thank you for giving me such a great tour of China town. It was a fantastic day." 2009, W. Roche, Australia

"Huge thanks again for the wonderful tour in Chinatown. This was my first photo tour with a professional photographer. The things you said, your energy and approach to people have been an enormous inspiration for me and helped me open my creative side. It's the most fascinating feeling anyone can have."A. Salaev, CA

"Overall, I felt neither managed too much nor left alone too much, which was the perfect balance. I enjoyed the bonhomie among our group, and it was nice to be on a tour on which photography was the primary aim. It's also evident there's much more to Chinatown than I'd imagined. 2010 R. Kishore, CA

"My thanks again to Gale Perry for being a patient, and fun, and encouraging photo companion. As always, I learned a lot and enjoyed every minute of it." D. Brown, 2010

"A very well organized and productive tour." 2011, V. Naiman, CA

"It was a great day and I certainly enjoyed the experience and the one to one of the small group." 2011, J. Sircus, CA

"I have to say that was the best photo day in SF. From the time we met the little man, going to lunch with him , off to the cookie factory and the barbor shop, It was incredible. I could not stop talking about it. It was perfect." 2011, J. Bujold, Ca

"I enjoyed the photo tour in Chinatown yesterday so much, can hardly wait to do the next one with you. Great!" M. Reynolds, 2012