Cracker Jack Davenport Beach Davenport, California This year happens to be the first year since the 1970's that Tioga Rd in Yosemite National Park has been open (it goes through Tuolumne Meadows) in January. All of the Yosemite high ground lakes are frozen but since there has been no snow this year the road stayed open! Willie and I had planned to spend the weekend in Yosemite and left early on Saturday morning; to keep this story short, about an hour into the drive I had to turn back and ended up spending the afternoon in the doc's office. Turned out I was so excited to get the photos that I had an anxiety attack! Yosemite didn't happen on Saturday :/ Instead, we noticed that there seemed to be some nice clouds hitting Santa Cruz and since the doc cleared me as healthy we headed to Davenport Beach. Davenport Beach is famous for the Davenport Crack, which you see below. I scouted around several areas and had actually been hoping to avoid the crack but I didn't like how the low tide exposed some rocks and settled on the crack. When I went back over to find a composition a lot of other photographers had already arrived, including Jared Ropelao! It was neat to finally meet a guy that I follow on flickr so frequently! I found a composition that I liked and decided I wanted to use the 2 walls between the crack to frame the photo. Unfortunately when I went to edit the photo I decided to crop out the right wall and I wished I had moved the camera more to the left so that the crack wouldn't be in the left half of the photo (yes, I realize the right half of this photo is boring). We didn't quite get the sunset we wanted but I did get to meet Jared, which was neat! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/11, 0.6 sec, ISO 200, Tripod HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND, HiTech 0.9 Soft Grad ND

Photos from the coast of California, including Big Sur and Santa Cruz

gallery pages: 1 2 3 4 >

< 7 of 30 >

Molten Water
Pfeiffer Beach
Big Sur, California

Every year thousands of photographers flock down to Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur to photograph the light beams through the Pfeiffer Arch (some people call it Keyhole Arch?). During December, January, and a bit into Februray the sun sets at just the right angle that its rays will streak through the hole in the rock. As the sun nears the horizon the light takes an orange hue and water droplets in the air will reflect the lights orange color.

My buddy Andy moved up here a couple months ago and has used his new proximity to me as an excuse to get more into photography. He had seen my photo "Spotlight" from last year and demanded that we go down to Pfeiffer this year. Between busy schedules and poor weather/tide conditions it took us until late January to get down. We played hooky with a work, left around 1pm and made our way down the Big Sur coast. It was a beautiful afternoon and we were pretty excited!

When we arrived at Pfeiffer we quickly noted how calm the water was. The tide was fairly high, about 3.2ft before sunset, and was supposed to only drop to 3ft by sunset. It seemed a bit high. Without the huge surf there wasn't much splash or spray and the light beam never materialized like it did for me last year. None-the-less I took a number of photos and left feeling somewhat disappointed. It wasn't until I got home that I realized I had captured a few nice shots! I especially liked this one because wispy strands of water picked up the setting sun, making it look like it was almost molten!

Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
70mm, f/16, 0.6 sec, ISO 64

Drifting
Natural Bridges State Beach
Santa Cruz, California

The beginning of May 2012 greeted us with 3 straight days of beautiful sunsets. I almost missed all of them. On this particular morning I checked the weather forecast and saw that it was supposed to be completely clear and decided to leave my camera gear at home, rather than throwing it in the trunk of my car. Later in the evening, when I left work, I looked up to see beautiful clouds. Willie sent me a text message with the same thing: "Lets get to Santa Cruz, NOW!" Oops, I had no camera gear! Willie left for Santa Cruz, I raced home to get my gear, and we decided to meet at Natural Bridges State Beach.

The sunset didn't look like it would light up any of the clouds over the typical Natural Bridges composition, the "bridge", but I found a nice piece of drift-wood to use as a foreground and waited for the waves to recede to create beautiful lines. As we waited the sky went from a dull gold, to absolutely beautiful oranges, and lastly some pinks and purples slowly crept in. An explosion of color at Natural Bridges! Both Willie and I went home very happy campers!

At the end of the day I had 2 photos that I really liked. I decided to post one right away and saved this one for the archives, to post at a later date when everyone forgot about the first one!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
24mm, f/9, ⅓ sec, ISO 250
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad

Natural Explosion
Natural Bridges State Beach
Santa Cruz, California

Lately my early morning routine has been wake up, check the weather, shower, eat, and then leave for work … either with or without the camera based on the weather report. On this particular morning I woke up, saw "Clear" skies (0% clouds) and sadly realized today wasn't going to be the day to find a sunset. I was kickin' myself because the sunset the night before was absolutely spectacular and I had my arse glued to my chair editing some portrait photos instead of out somewhere shooting. About to leave for work, I instinctively grabbed my gear, put it on my back, and was about to walk out the door when I remembered today was clear skies and I should just leave my stuff at home.

After a full day of working I walked outside and looked up to see some beautiful clouds in the sky. Thinking I better not make the mistake two days in a row I immediately sent Willie a text message. Only … he beat me to it and I already had one waiting for me: "the clouds look awesome." I replied "should we go somewhere?" as I walked into the gym. I was scheduled to meet with a personal trainer to go over a new workout but as I waited for the guy, Willie wrote back "I'm leaving for Natural Bridges in a sec. You in?!" I typed "I'll be there in 10" but before I hit send I realized … I LEFT MY GEAR AT HOME!!! ARGH ::hair pulling::

I decided I'd skip the personal trainer, race home to grab my stuff and meet Willie at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz. I managed to avoid a bunch of traffic and arrive at Natural Bridges with plenty of time to scout. Looking at the sky it was either going to be glorious or it was going to be awful.

Willie and I scouted for a while, trying to find a different composition than the normal "Natural Bridge" that everyone shoots. The sun was setting in the wrong direction to shoot the bridge but if the sky lit up like it had the previous night (see Rich's photo) we might get some color. As the sun dropped I quickly realized I had to point in a different direction and decided I'd use a piece of driftwood as my foreground element. After a couple minutes I wandered away and then I looked back and Willie had picked up on my queue and was back at the driftwood. That's when the sky started lighting up right in my original composition! I raced back to the driftwood and setup, waiting for some big waves to give us some water motion. As we waited the sky went from a dull gold, to absolutely beautiful oranges, and then as the orange faded, the back left of the sky filled with pinks and purples. An explosion of color at Natural Bridges! Both Willie and I went home very happy campers!

Color cast removed using D-Breezy's instructions.

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
24mm, f/16, ⅓ sec, ISO 100
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad

Wave Breaker
Hole in the Wall Beach
Davenport, California

James, Wilie and I headed down to Santa Cruz last Wednesday to capture what we hoped would be a nice sunset. We settled on Panther Beach but quickly got bored of the compositions and James and I went through the hole to Hole in the Wall Beach. We met Lukas and Jim Patterson as we waited for the sun to set (super cool!). I spent a while on the other side of these rocks but as the sun continued to set I followed the color in the sky back around to this side of the rocks that you see in this photo. I really liked how the rock would guide the retreating wave around before splashing back into the ocean. I used a long shutter (2 seconds) to capture the wave action. Luckily I had some big rain boots on and I was able to stand in the water without really getting wet -- which provided the nice water motion that you see in this shot!

I managed to get back through the hole in the wall and return to my car without getting swept away this time! Last time I went for an accidental swim, got tossed into the rocks, and ruined my D80, iPhone, blackberry and 50mm f/1.8. Yay for surviving this time with no casualties!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/14, 2 sec, ISO 160
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad

Holy Sunset, Batman!
Hole in the Wall Beach
Davenport, California

I had a feeling that the skies last week would we worth a trip to the coast and I threw my camera gear into my trunk just in case. Sure enough, James called Willie on Wednesday afternoon and asked if we wanted to leave work early and head to Santa Cruz. I had to wear business attire to work that morning and forgot to bring a change of clothes with me so I forced to head out with suit slacks and a button down shirt on. Once we got to Santa Cruz we decided we'd head to Panther Beach. We arrived and scouted for a while but I quickly realized that most of the good compositions would be under water before the sun set. I decided to head through the hole in the rock and start scouting "Hole in the Wall Beach".

A little over a year ago Willie and I went down to Hole in the Wall Beach, crossed through the hole and had a very boring sunset. What I didn't realize was that the tide had come in and when we went to go back through the hole to return to our car I mistimed things, got swept in a wave, taken partially out to sea, thrown against the rocks, and then finally managed to swim back to the beach and get out. While my camera bag stayed mostly dry I lost a D80, a 50mm f/1.8, my iPhone, and my work blackberry (thankfully Apple replaced my iPhone for free!)

Fast forward to Wednesday and again, the tide was low when we arrived and coming into a 3ft high tide. James, Willie, and I crossed the hole and scouted out some locations. I decided to stay close to the hole and shoot some of the rock outcroppings. Lukas Wenger passed us as we scouted around and later Jim Patterson and Kendra walked by and I managed a quick "Hi!" before they continued on to the south part of the beach (personally, I found) it pretty neat to run into a famous photographer like Jim!)

Wearing tall rain boots ended up being a true blessing. As the tide came in the spot where I had setup my tripod quickly filled with incoming waves; the boots kept me dry while I was able to take photographs as water came in and then retreated. I tried to find some movement of the water around the rocks. As the sun continued to set the sky filled up with more and more color. Turned out to be quite a nice sunset! And I was able to successfully return to my car without getting swept away! I've now successfully conquered Hole in the Wall beach!!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/18, 1.3 sec, ISO 125
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad

Skyrocket
"Cripps Beach"
Davenport, California

Yesterday I checked the weather forecast and it looked like there were some nice clouds rolling in. I asked Willie if I should head home, grab my gear, and then hit the coast. Willie had been watching the weather satellite all day and it looked like the clouds disappeared as they hit Santa Cruz and he thought it wouldn't be a good day to go shoot. Instead of grabbing my gear I went to the gym and when I walked out of the gym at 5:30pm and looked up at the sky it was *on fire* with some amazing/blazing color. I banged my head against my car for a couple minutes as I watched the beautiful sunset die out.

Today, determined not to make the same mistake again I packed up all my camera gear and threw it in the car … just in case the weather would hold out today and we'd get a nice sunset. Sure enough, at 2:30pm Willie tells me "I'm meeting James Wang at 2:50. Come if you want!" Of course! So I ditch work, hop in my car, and the 3 of us drive down to Santa Cruz.

It was supposed to be high tide and James recommends we head on over to Cripps Beach (popular name because Joshua Cripps/Jim Patterson seem to be the first to photograph it). After parking, walking to the beach, and then climbing down the cliff (there was a rope attached to help out) we scouted around for a while. We walked along the beach for a while and Willie and I eventually found a nice little cove that had some interesting water currents rolling over the rocks. We setup and waited. Unfortunately the tide came in quicker than the sun set and our composition quickly became under water! Doh! Willie and I both left our spot and began to scout new locations. Willie stopped along a beach, and not wanting to take the same photo as Willie, I kept going.

I had seen this little inlet earlier and now that the tide had risen a bit the composition looked much nicer than 30 minutes earlier. I noticed that there were some clouds further to the west so I moved south to face them. Sure enough 10 minutes after the sun had set the sky lit up! I wished the clouds had been a little bit closer to give us more color but there was some beautiful stuff going on along the horizon and for a minute or two the sky above me lit up as well.

While snapping away I noticed a small plume of smoke rising out of the ocean. As I kept watching the sea I noticed that the plume was rising, and rising, and rising, until it eventually pitched and rolled and continued on an upward trajectory. A rocket!!! I just witnessed a rocket launch! I was pretty excited … especially since I work in a similar industry. When I got home I tried to look up what the launch was (I assumed it was from Vandenburg Airforce Base) but I couldn't find any rocket launches scheduled. Must have been some kind of missile test? Who knows. You can see the rocket in the photo, about ⅔ of the way to the right in this image, just above the horizon.

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
19mm, f/13, 3 sec, ISO 200
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad + HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND

Cracker Jack
Davenport Beach
Davenport, California

This year happens to be the first year since the 1970's that Tioga Rd in Yosemite National Park has been open (it goes through Tuolumne Meadows) in January. All of the Yosemite high ground lakes are frozen but since there has been no snow this year the road stayed open! Willie and I had planned to spend the weekend in Yosemite and left early on Saturday morning; to keep this story short, about an hour into the drive I had to turn back and ended up spending the afternoon in the doc's office. Turned out I was so excited to get the photos that I had an anxiety attack! Yosemite didn't happen on Saturday :/

Instead, we noticed that there seemed to be some nice clouds hitting Santa Cruz and since the doc cleared me as healthy we headed to Davenport Beach. Davenport Beach is famous for the Davenport Crack, which you see below. I scouted around several areas and had actually been hoping to avoid the crack but I didn't like how the low tide exposed some rocks and settled on the crack.

When I went back over to find a composition a lot of other photographers had already arrived, including Jared Ropelao! It was neat to finally meet a guy that I follow on flickr so frequently! I found a composition that I liked and decided I wanted to use the 2 walls between the crack to frame the photo. Unfortunately when I went to edit the photo I decided to crop out the right wall and I wished I had moved the camera more to the left so that the crack wouldn't be in the left half of the photo (yes, I realize the right half of this photo is boring). We didn't quite get the sunset we wanted but I did get to meet Jared, which was neat!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/11, 0.6 sec, ISO 200, Tripod
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND, HiTech 0.9 Soft Grad ND

Spotlight
Pfeiffer Beach
Big Sur, California

One of the coolest shots along the CA coast-line occurs during December/January every year: the sun just happens to set at just the right spot that a light-beam peeks through Pfeiffer Arch at Pfeiffer State Beach in Big Sur, CA. If the light beam happens to hit a splash of water it can also light up the spray. Willie, Celina, and I arrived about 2.5 hours prior to sunset to get the prime location. We heard a rumor that a workshop would be there and we wanted to beat them to the good spots. We were the firsts to arrive, picked the best composition that we could find and waited.

About 45 minutes before sunset the light beam started to show up. At first it was just a faint beam but about 20 minutes before sunset it really started to glow orange and red. We waited for a large wave to come through the arch and create a lot of mist and spray which would catch in the light and make the beam visible. Luckily for us there was a strong surf and about 15 minutes before sunset the light beam just lit up like crazy. I snapped away as fast as I could to make sure I captured it. About 15 seconds later this large beam was gone. There continued to be beams all the way until about sunset but they were never as big as this one.

Despite the fact that the D700 is supposed to have slightly better dynamic range than the Canon 5D Mark II, Willie kept getting great exposures all in 1 shot while I couldn't seem to avoid clipping if I exposed the rocks properly. In order to get this shot I had to expose one photo for the light beam and then a much darker exposure to capture the suns reflection off the splashes. I also blended a 3rd image in to keep the foreground rocks a bit sharper than the f/9 original exposure produced.

My apologies to the people behind us who were hoping to get a shot of the entire Pfeiffer Arch (wide angle). We setup early so we could get our shot and we knew that the light would only get better and didn't want to lose our spot by moving. I guess it worked out because a bunch of other photographers ended up moving close to us and at that point there was no way the guy who wanted to shoot wide was going to get his shot :( Sorry again!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
62mm, f/9, 1/10 sec, ISO 160, Tripod
No filters, NOT an HDR

Willie and I had been itching to take some photos and the weather forecast called for partially cloudy skies in Santa Cruz so we decided to grab a 3rd friend and head down the coast to Davenport Pier. There used to be an entire pier here but for some reason or another it got taken down and just the pylons are left. To get down to the beach is fairly tricky -- there's a "trail" that heads down the cliff and in some parts it's *really* steep. It's a little bit like rock-climbing, although you're not hanging from the wall. I had heard people use rope to help out so I threw some in my bag before we left and tied it to a pole at the top and it helped us out a little. Getting down wasn't too bad as long as you had good footing. Getting up was almost easier, until the top, when I was glad I had attached the rope.

Once we were on the beach I scouted around for a good composition. I find this place actually pretty hard to photograph … mostly because the sunset isn't exactly where you want it … and it's hard to get enough foreground interest to make the photo interesting. I started off way to the left because there was some interesting foam, but by the time sunset hit the foam was gone and the composition was ruined. I then moved to this spot because of the rocks in the foreground and its close proximity to the old pier pilons. I waited for some wave action and then captured it on its way out. Unfortunately, a big wave came in shortly after and took a couple of those rocks with it, so that composition was now done. All those clouds we had hoped for never came in and the sky was pretty boring.

When we got home it was pretty clear that in order to get something decent I was going to have to do quite a bit of post-processing work. I call this an "artograph" because I had to stitch several photos together and then do some heavy processing to get it to look like this. I found several shots I had taken with different cloud positions and blended them together to get a more interesting sky. My original composition was a little too tightly cropped and I found another photo that I could get some sky back on the top and blended that in. Because that photo increased the height of the photo I had to use content-aware fill to add some size to the right side of the photo and to keep the proper 3:2 dimensions. Then I played around with the white balance temperature and tint to bring out some purple color in the sky. What do you guys think? Too overdone?

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
24mm, f/14, 1.3 sec, ISO 100, Tripod
HiTech 0.9 Soft Grad ND, HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND

Cracker Jack
Davenport Beach
Davenport, California

This year happens to be the first year since the 1970's that Tioga Rd in Yosemite National Park has been open (it goes through Tuolumne Meadows) in January. All of the Yosemite high ground lakes are frozen but since there has been no snow this year the road stayed open! Willie and I had planned to spend the weekend in Yosemite and left early on Saturday morning; to keep this story short, about an hour into the drive I had to turn back and ended up spending the afternoon in the doc's office. Turned out I was so excited to get the photos that I had an anxiety attack! Yosemite didn't happen on Saturday :/

Instead, we noticed that there seemed to be some nice clouds hitting Santa Cruz and since the doc cleared me as healthy we headed to Davenport Beach. Davenport Beach is famous for the Davenport Crack, which you see below. I scouted around several areas and had actually been hoping to avoid the crack but I didn't like how the low tide exposed some rocks and settled on the crack.

When I went back over to find a composition a lot of other photographers had already arrived, including Jared Ropelao! It was neat to finally meet a guy that I follow on flickr so frequently! I found a composition that I liked and decided I wanted to use the 2 walls between the crack to frame the photo. Unfortunately when I went to edit the photo I decided to crop out the right wall and I wished I had moved the camera more to the left so that the crack wouldn't be in the left half of the photo (yes, I realize the right half of this photo is boring). We didn't quite get the sunset we wanted but I did get to meet Jared, which was neat!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/11, 0.6 sec, ISO 200, Tripod
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND, HiTech 0.9 Soft Grad ND

Cracker Jack Davenport Beach Davenport, California This year happens to be the first year since the 1970's that Tioga Rd in Yosemite National Park has been open (it goes through Tuolumne Meadows) in January. All of the Yosemite high ground lakes are frozen but since there has been no snow this year the road stayed open! Willie and I had planned to spend the weekend in Yosemite and left early on Saturday morning; to keep this story short, about an hour into the drive I had to turn back and ended up spending the afternoon in the doc's office. Turned out I was so excited to get the photos that I had an anxiety attack! Yosemite didn't happen on Saturday :/ Instead, we noticed that there seemed to be some nice clouds hitting Santa Cruz and since the doc cleared me as healthy we headed to Davenport Beach. Davenport Beach is famous for the Davenport Crack, which you see below. I scouted around several areas and had actually been hoping to avoid the crack but I didn't like how the low tide exposed some rocks and settled on the crack. When I went back over to find a composition a lot of other photographers had already arrived, including Jared Ropelao! It was neat to finally meet a guy that I follow on flickr so frequently! I found a composition that I liked and decided I wanted to use the 2 walls between the crack to frame the photo. Unfortunately when I went to edit the photo I decided to crop out the right wall and I wished I had moved the camera more to the left so that the crack wouldn't be in the left half of the photo (yes, I realize the right half of this photo is boring). We didn't quite get the sunset we wanted but I did get to meet Jared, which was neat! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/11, 0.6 sec, ISO 200, Tripod HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND, HiTech 0.9 Soft Grad ND" href="javascript:openLB(1674256033,'',XLarge,'',1024,683);">