Places and Faces: the Dgrin Birthday Event

Although our 5-year party was almost 6 months ago (last December) I'm only just now finishing up ranking and processing photos from that great week. :lol3

Those of you who went came back with some really nice shots. Although nothing was official we had a few groups going up and down the coast, shooting and getting to know each other. And a lot of photos from the party itself were posted - which I'm grateful for because I lost track of my camera during those twoish hours and didn't get any shots from it.

Starting near the beginning, here's our little group the day before, sorting out the Dgrin lanyard and getting organized with the name tags we had designed for us (by none other than that AWESOME Jon Harsem, who we know as the Dgrinner fotodojo)



That week there was some good fun, lots of good sushi:



Good photos:



And some very bright beaches. This was somewhere off of Route 1 near Half Moon Bay:



One the beach I saw an actual Flying Dutchman!!!



We met up with a couple of friends for lunch in the Lower Haight. There are some very interesting folk to be found there:



And then for the evening before the party, most of the Dgrinners met up at Twin Peaks to shoot the sunset over downtown. I saw some really nice work coming out of that night, but none from me. Here's some masochistic people running up the road:



The morning of the party, we went shopping for some camera gear and some of us walked away with brand-new lenses...



That afternoon we drove down to Santa Cruz. There was a lot going on: surfers, tourists, sea lions, Bay Photo, Mexican Food...

Sometimes it was hard to get the right angle to shoot under the pier:



But it was all good. The sea lions move fast and are loud and stinky, but really funny.

Here's some good people in a beautiful sunset, who have nothing to do with stinky sea lions:









The evening fisherman kept hooking starfish. Trav helps them hold the line while they net it up:



I love the quality fo the light late evening gets you. It was a beautiful sunset, indeed:



We rushed back to Mountain View to pretty up for the party. And as I said I lost track of my camera that night so I have no photos from it on there, at least none that I took. I had just gotten my 5DmII a day before I flew out here, so it was still pretty new and people wanted to play with it. But if you can't trust Dgrinners, then who can you trust? :lol3

While Baldy took most of the Dgrinners to SM HQ for a tour, we had our pseudo-afterparty at the Office Bar. The majority of our group were my coworkers (or future coworkers) so I guess it was kind of appropriate. What a place! What happens at the Office Bar stays at the Office Bar, but I don't think any of us have ever laughed so hard in our lives.



We turned tail and ran across the street to the billiards club to wind down.



And the following day we refreshed ourselves with Dragon Well tea:



I saw these boots through the window. I loved her boots.



And the remaining afternoon and evening was spent hiking around the Mission district, eating Vietnamese food and gelato and savoring all the smiles and sounds of the city.







I live here now so it's kind of odd to see these photos that were shot as a tourist. And it kind of makes me miss all the great people on Dgrin who visited here that week, but I hope that we'll see each other again sometime with cameras in hand.

Viva la Dgrin!