Ah Louis (1840 – 1936) came to the U.S. from the Canton area of China in 1856 with the hopes of striking it rich during the Gold Rush. Like most of the immigrants, it didn’t quite work out that way but he did find his own way eventually becoming a successful banker and shopkeeper in San Luis Obispo. He played an important role during the construction of the railroads as well.

I read that Ah Louis’ grandson currently owns the store. It’s awesome to think that there are still some people around who have probably spoken first-hand to folks who were in the Gold Rush. That happened over 150 years ago!

I find this interesting because that is the era in which my family settled in America. My grandparents and their ancestors came from the same region as well. It’s not often that I have met people that have had family in the U.S. for so long so it is pretty fascinating to me when I learn about these stories.

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When the Chinese first started immigrating to California during the Gold Rush, most did not speak English. This made it difficult for them to assimilate into society. Combined with the racial discrimination of the time, immigrants needed to form family associations in order for protection. This eventually became The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, more commonly known as the Chinese Six Companies. Individually, the Chinese were weak, but as a group the associations were quite powerful politically.

Fast-forward 150 years later, family associations still exist to help immigrants out when they come to the U.S., and are typically a place where the older generation of Chinese socializes. San Francisco’s Chinatown has many family associations, as well as the Los Angeles Chinatown. I would like to have posted a picture of the Wong family association, but I didn’t know where it was.

See more of my San Francisco pictures.

Clearly I prefer color photography but there are certain situations where color can be a distraction. For this image of the last remaining Chinese shrimp fishing village in the San Francisco Bay Area, I wanted to juxtapose the historical aspects of the China Camp fishing village with the modern day site being used as a recreational park.

The best way of converting color images to black and white is quite easy. All you have to do is open the photo in Photoshop and use the “Channel Mixer” adjustment layer then check the “Monochrome” button. The image will turn black and white with the slider at 100% Red, 0% Green, and 0% Blue. Those values correspond to the type of B&W; filter that you would use if you were shooting it on film. Each image responds differently to the color values so you should experiment with the sliders. The important thing is to make sure those three slider values add up to about 100% when you are done.

For this image, I used 100% red to simulate the Red B&W; filter effect. What this does is create a stark black sky where there was originally blue, and accentuate the high contrast on anything else of a lighter color. Ansel Adams used this filter often and very effectively for his most famous images. Of more subtle detail is the female sunbather being juxtaposed in color. I just masked the channel mixer layer out of the area around the woman.

Here is a bigger version of the China Camp State Park photo.

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Our other stop was at the pet cemetery. There were some very nice, colorful flowers blooming. I think I got a shot or two that I am happy with.

Photo: Presidio Pet Cemetery, San Francisco, California

After lunch, I decided to go up to Mission San Rafael because Jim and his wife suggested it would be the only place on my to-do list that wasn’t foggy. They were right. It was about 85 degrees there. The Bay Area is very unusual in that you can drive a mile or two and have a thirty degree change in weather.

Mission San Rafael Arcangel is a 20th century replica of the original at the approximate location. Probably because the chapel is only about 60-70 years old, it didn’t have the ambience that most of the other missions have. Though it was a replica, it looked like a newer church. A baptism was about to start in the chapel when I got there. I had never seen one before so I guess that was enlightening. The new mission church next door was having a wedding so I took a few pictures there before leaving for nearby China Camp State Park.

In the 1870’s, the San Francisco Bay had a large group of Chinese shrimp fishermen that were very efficient at what they did. Discrimination and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 eventually killed off the Chinese fishing industry in the bay. All of their fishing camps disappeared with the exception of the China Camp village.

Picture: China Camp State Park Shrimp Fishing Village, San Rafael, California

The village was dilapitated but it had some interesting displays in the visitor center. The buildings there were very worn but looked very authentic still. I didn’t talk to anyone there but awhile back I read that a chinese family descended from the original group run the cafe and oversee the village. I found that to be interesting because those original chinese fishermen came from the same Guangdong province in China that my ancestors did. Not many people in America nowadays speak my family dialect but almost all of the older generation of Chinese-Americans did. I’ll likely return to China Camp in the future to photograph during better lighting conditions. I’ll be sure to do my research beforehand so I could ask some questions of the people there. The last thing I want to do is be under-informed and sound stupid while asking questions. Plus I’m not exactly the most articulate person in the world.

The fog was still hanging around the SF Peninsula so I decided to give the Marin Headlands one last try at sunset. I’d been up there four previous times during the trip at sunset but it was either clear or the fog was too thick to see anything. Getting a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog is something that I’d wanted to photograph for the past five years. I’d gone up to the Headlands several times when I was living up north but was fogged out each time. The one time it did look nice was during the middle of the day when the bridge is not very golden.

Photo: Golden Gate Bridge Summer Fog, Marin Headlands, California

These 15 hour days of summer are brutal. To wake up at 4:30 a.m. in order to drive somewhere to get a sunrise shot, shoot five or six locations during the day, then have dinner at 10 or 11 p.m. is very exhausting. Those who think that travel photography is easy aren’t trying hard enough.

See more of my San Francisco pictures.

When gold was discovered in the western Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848, word quickly got out to traveling Chinese merchants in the San Francisco area. They returned home to Southern China (Guangdong / Canton) and told their relatives about the “Land of Golden Mountains.” That region of rural China had always been very poor and still poor to this day due to agriculturally-poor soil. So a number of men left China for the United States to become miners in the Sierra. Their goal was to make enough money in a few years and come back home to provide a more prosperous lifestyle for their families. It never quite worked out for most of them due to several reasons. One of which was intense racial discrimination in the mining camps, with another reason being the language and cultural barrier. The Chinese were seen as hard-working, quiet people with strange customs.

Over time, the Chinese adapted by becoming a service-oriented group for their Caucasian counterparts. They provided Asian medicinal herbs and set up shop as merchants both to each other and to the other ethnic groups. The Chinese taught the Caucasians innovative farming techniques to improve efficiency of their crops. A combination of their extreme hard-work while mining and their aggressiveness in establishing businesses, the Chinese earned a reputation as efficient workers. By the time the U.S. started building the Central Pacific Railroad, California had solicited the help of foreign labor; mainly Chinese to build the most dangerous portions of track in the Sierra from Sacramento thru the Donner Pass in winter to Utah. Many died during this period but the railroad eventually was connected with the other portion of the Transcontinental Railroad which originated from Omaha, Nebraska. California during this period from the 1860’s to the 1880’s was still very much a land of outlaws. In some respects, one can travel through certain portions of California today and still experience some of that historical legacy.

Photo: Chinese railroad workers in the Sierra Nevada mountains at the California State Railroad Museum, Old Town Sacramento, California

My great-great grandfather immigrated to San Francisco during the railroad-building era and since then my family has had roots in America in some form or another. As of today, I believe that all of my immediate family members reside in the United States. But if it weren’t for the Chinese men who came here to build the railroad system, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve always had an immense respect for the history of our country and the Gold Rush era has been of a particular fascination of mine for obvious reasons. That is why my website looks the way it is. Now excuse me while I try to find a way back to San Francisco… or dream about it for tonight. It’s late.

See more of my Sacramento pictures.

Locke is the last remaining rural Chinese town in the United States. At the time of it’s establishment in the early 1900’s, the Chinese were not allowed to own the land on which they lived on and forced to lease the property from their white landlords. At one time there were 1,500 Chinese living in Locke and predominantely male due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which made it illegal for people from China to immigrate to the States. As a result, the Chinese gold miners and railroad workers in America were forced to live apart from their families who remained in China. It wasn’t until 1943 that the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed therefore clearing the path for the majority of the Chinese in the country today.

Subsequently, during the 1940’s and 50’s the majority of young Chinese-Americans moved away from rural Locke to get an education and professional careers in urban and suburbia. In 2004, the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency finally allowed the sale of land to those who had been living on it for many years. A great gesture to the elder Chinese residents, but very late in timing as today there are only 10 Chinese left in the population of 90. The majority of the population today is white.

The Locke Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 1971. In addition, it was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 14, 1990.

See more of my Gold Country photos.