Legion of Honor hasn't been shot for portraits yet — most clients come here for couples work. Switch to "All" to see everything.
Where we shoot, on a map
The Legion of Honor is a 1924 Beaux-Arts museum in Lincoln Park — columns, a colonnaded courtyard, Rodin's Thinker out front, and the Pacific somewhere over the cliff. One of the only sites in San Francisco that gives couples a classical-architecture backdrop without a hike or a permit.
Most San Francisco couples' photography happens on sand or in fog: Baker, Sutro, Lands End, Crissy. The Legion of Honor is the rare exception. A full Beaux-Arts museum sitting on a bluff at the western edge of the city, with a colonnaded courtyard, a Rodin sculpture out front, and views west toward the Pacific. You get the look of a European palace in twenty minutes from downtown, with no airfare and no scaffolding.
The lay of the land
One winter morning I shot a proposal here in heavy fog — the kind where you can't see the colonnade from across the courtyard. The couple was disappointed when they arrived; they'd pictured the columns in clean light. We started anyway, working the front entrance close-in so the fog read as atmosphere rather than as absence-of-view. By the time we got to the back lawn the fog had lifted just enough that the Holocaust Memorial figures emerged out of the mist behind them. Those ended up being the best frames of the session. The Legion handles weather better than people expect.
Getting here
A few things about Legion of Honor
Built in 1924, the Legion of Honor is a three-quarter-scale replica of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur in Paris. It was a memorial gift from Alma Spreckels to the City of San Francisco honoring California soldiers who died in World War I.
— famsf.orgThe bronze cast of Rodin's 'The Thinker' that sits in the courtyard is one of about 20 lifetime casts in existence. It was installed at the museum's opening in 1924.
— famsf.org / WikipediaThe grounds are free and open to the public from sunrise to dusk; only the museum interior requires admission. Handheld photography on the grounds is unrestricted; tripods and large lighting setups put you in 'commercial production' territory and require a permit through FAMSF Production Services.
— famsf.org/visit/photography-and-filming-policyGeorge Segal's 'The Holocaust' sculpture installed on the museum's back lawn in 1984 was originally controversial — the museum board fought it for years. It's now considered one of the most quietly powerful pieces of public art in the city.
— Wikipedia / SF Chronicle archiveLincoln Park is built on top of San Francisco's old Golden Gate Cemetery, which was relocated to Colma in the early 1900s. Occasional remains still surface during grounds construction — most recently during the 1995 museum renovation.
— San Francisco Public Library
Legion of Honor also appears as Legion of Honor Museum, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, or Lincoln Park Legion of Honor.