You may see a few photos from nearby locations here. Many shoots span multiple spots in the same session.
Baker Beach
Pick what you're planning and we'll pull up the right pricing. Not sure yet? Start with a free 10-minute call.
Hop next door for a different mood
Sutro Baths
The 1896 ruins on the cliffs at the western tip of the city.
Lands End
The Coastal Trail along the northwest cliffs with bridge overlooks.
Golden Gate Overlook
The Langdon Court plaza with the two cypress framing the bridge.
Batteries to Bluffs Trail
The 470 stairs down to Marshall's Beach, tide-dependent.
Where we shoot, on a map
Baker Beach is the mile-long stretch of sand on the Pacific side of the Presidio with the most photographed Golden Gate Bridge view in San Francisco. Free parking, easy walk, serpentine cliffs at the south end, the bridge tower close enough to feel personal at the north end. It is the most accessible "real beach" in the SF cluster and the natural anchor for a same-day rotation through the Presidio coastline.
Baker Beach is the easy starter for a San Francisco shoot. A mile of sand on the Pacific side of the Presidio, free parking that's actually free, a short flat walk through cypress to the water, and at the north end of the beach the Golden Gate Bridge framed about as cleanly as it gets anywhere on the city side. You can hand-hold a long lens and have the south tower fill the frame.
The lay of the land
The Baker Beach story I tell most often is the August fog one. Couple flew in from Texas for an engagement weekend, Baker was on the list as the headline location, and the morning of the shoot the marine layer was completely socked in from the bridge all the way south past Land's End. I texted them at noon saying it didn't look great but we'd give it the full window. We met at the north lot at five, walked down to the sand, and the fog was so thick you couldn't see the south tower from a hundred yards out. They were trying to act fine about it. I told them to walk the beach with me anyway, that we'd shoot the serpentine cliffs at the south end where the fog doesn't matter, and we'd just see what the bridge end did. About forty minutes in, with maybe twenty minutes of light left, the marine layer lifted off the water in a single push, like a curtain pulling back. The bridge came in clean, the sky behind it went peach, and we ran north along the sand and got fifteen minutes of the cleanest compression frames I've ever shot at Baker. Those were the gallery. Lesson I pass on now: at Baker in summer, don't bail on the shoot because of fog. The marine layer here moves on its own clock, and the cliffs and the cypress and the sand all work regardless of whether the bridge cooperates. You only need ten minutes of clear sky to get the shot.
Make a trip out of it
Where to stay
Getting here
A few things about Baker Beach
Burning Man was born here. On June 22, 1986, Larry Harvey and Jerry James burned an 8-foot wooden man on Baker Beach with about a dozen friends. By 1990 the crowd had grown big enough that park police intervened, and the burn moved to the Black Rock Desert.
— Burning Man Project / Presidio blogThe Sand Ladder at the north end of the beach is a wooden staircase that connects Baker to the Batteries to Bluffs Trail. From the top of the Sand Ladder, you can hike north along the bluffs to Marshall's Beach and on to the Golden Gate Bridge without ever crossing a road.
— Presidio.gov / NPSThe gray-green cliffs at the south end of Baker Beach are serpentine, California's state rock. The rock formed on the deep ocean floor 150-200 million years ago and was scraped onto the continent as the Pacific Plate slid under North America.
— NPS Baker Beach pageBaker Beach is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which means it's federal park land managed by the National Park Service. Commercial photography technically requires a permit from the GGNRA Office of Special Park Uses, with a minimum 15 business days of lead time.
— Presidio.gov / NPS / SF Rec & ParksBattery Chamberlin, the concrete gun emplacement above the beach, holds a working 95,000-pound disappearing-rifle gun from 1904. The Presidio's volunteer corps demonstrates the gun's recoil-driven raise-and-lower mechanism on the first weekend of every month.
— NPS Baker Beach pageThe marine layer that fogs Baker Beach in summer is called Karl by locals, after the misunderstood giant in the 2003 film Big Fish. August is the foggiest month, often called Fogust.
— Wikipedia: San Francisco fog / SF Jeep Tours
Baker Beach also appears as Baker Beach Presidio.