If you can't tell by looking, all pictures in this section were manipulated. They were all selected and filtered for effect. This gallery is for fun, pure and simple. It offers the usual information about each destination that we've done throughout the California beach vacation site, but the picture, itself, isn't quite right. It's not a "real" portrayal of what that beach, bird or tourist is. It's what we made up from what we saw and created on a computer in an office.

It's important to distinguish between fact and fiction, though the lines are blurring. We've seen many a talented PR spinmeister tell you something about a California beach, that upon closer look, isn't exactly true. We've seen once-prestigious media now take to blogging and have their own staff post comments, pretending like they are their respondents, just to beef up the ranks in search engines. And all this points to the reason we're dwelling on the topic of truth. The gallery on this page is taken from real photos. That is true. The photos have been changed to show colors and patterns that were never in the picture when the shutter was pushed. So for what this rose-colored California Beach Vacation Guide picture gallery is worth, just know that we make every effort to contain the manipulations within this gallery. The rest of the web site remains true to photojournalistic standards.