FOR RONDAL PARTRIDGE, joining in the family business didn't mean becoming a dentist or a salesperson. It meant taking pictures – his mother was none other than celebrated photographer Imogen Cunningham. Partridge helped out in her darkroom as a child, and by the time he was 20, he had apprenticed under Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. But he's always had his own eclectic style, which often seems in direct opposition to those of his mentors. Now 85, Partridge has lived in Berkeley most of his adult life. This exhibition traces his career in California photography; a concurrent show at the Oakland Museum of California examines his "personal photography." It begins with his work in the 1930s under Lange and Adams and then follows him to the rodeo circuit and to a brief stint in New York doing magazine work in the 1940s. His roadside-America images from the '50s and '60s look at all different kinds of signage and commercial architecture, and recent photos of family and friends round out the show. Many of Partridge's pictures manifest something of Lange's social and environmental conscience, but frequently in a subtle, and occasionally humorous, way. Pave It and Paint It Green, for instance, is a view of Yosemite's Half Dome behind a sea of parked cars. It's a critique of human infiltration of the pristine nature in Ansel Adams's famous images, but it's also poking fun at Adams's (perhaps overzealous and unrealistic) insistence on excluding all things human-made from the viewfinder. It's also a great example of Partridge's interest in landscape geometries. Many of his pictures of California's great outdoors, from Danville's hills to Daly City's boxlike houses to San Francisco's freeways, are actually close examinations of repeating geometric forms. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 678 Mission, S.F. $3, $1 students and seniors, free for six and under and members. (415) 357-1848. (Lindsey Westbrook)