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
Indecision
Hideaways Beach
Princeville, Kauai, HI

Before I left for my week of vacation in Kauai I looked at the weather forecast and it said "Partially Cloudy" or "Rain" pretty much every day while we were there. Although I was bummed that it might ruin my plans for lying on the beach, I got excited because that meant I might be in luck for catching a killer sunset. Of course once we arrived at Kauai the weather changed completely and it was mostly beautiful days with hardly a cloud in the sky at sunset.

There was one exception: sunset on the first full day we were on the island. After making our way down a steep trail we arrived at Hideaways beach and to my delight I noticed lava rock all over the beach. Do you ever have one of those days where there's so many composition possibilities that you become overloaded and don't even know where to begin? Even though we arrived super early, I kept going from spot to spot, back and forth, up and down the beach, unable to decide which lava rocks I wanted to shoot! "Oh, I liked that spot, but the clouds just moved. Ok, over here, the clouds are better here now." I spent so much time moving my tripod all around that I almost missed the sunset! 

I originally setup in this location because the waves were creating some beautiful water motion in this little channel and the clouds had been positioned perfectly for the sunset. Unfortunately, when the sun got low enough to begin the light show, the clouds picked up and started high-tailing it out of my composition (moving to the left). From this spot I was able to setup my tripod on a couple rocks and avoided getting sand in my tripod (sand is about the worst thing for a nice tripod), and the rocks were high enough to keep me mostly dry when the waves came in here! I waited until the wave started retreating from the little channel to open the shutter. To my delight, the exiting wave hit some rocks in the middle of the channel and splashed up, catching some of the beautiful setting sunlight.

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S
17mm, f/14, 1/6 sec, ISO 160
Lee Filter Holder + 0.9 HiTech Soft ND Grad
High and Low
Zabriski Point Panorama
Death Valley National Park, California

Willie, Zack, and I arrived at Death Valley in the evening, checked into our hotel, grabbed some food and began looking at the forecasts to figure out the details for our Death Valley trip. There was a chance that the clouds would roll into position in time for sunrise so we woke up before dawn and raced over to Zabriski Point. We were the first to arrive! Since it was dark and we hadn't scouted earlier, we setup where we thought we should be and waited for sunrise. As was the theme of the trip, we had no color in the sunrise except for a faint glow. The moon was full and setting and we managed to take advantage of that and capture a few shots with the setting moon (I did not pull a "Peter Lik" and place the moon in this shot).

As many of you know, Zabrsiki Point is a pretty mind-blowing place. There's some awesome shapes, amazing hills, snow covered mountains (although without snow), and just a giant escape. Behind the view here is Badwater Salt flats, the lowest point in the U.S. Above badwater, you can make out 14,000 ft mountains! Pretty insane to have the 2 juxtapositions in the same scene.

I decided that a single exposure couldn't properly capture this place and took a pano of Zabriski Point with the moon setting. A little bit of pink color came out in the sky and I absolutely love the shapes here! Rather than edit out the people, I thought I'd leave the other photographers and on-lookers in the photo in an attempt to give this place a sense of scale!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
Multiple Exposures at 35mm, f/11?
Thomas Fog-erty
Sunset above Thomas Fogarty Winery
Woodside, California

When people think of California wine they typically think of one of 2 (or 3) main areas: Napa Valley, Sonoma County, and the up-and-coming Paso Robles regions. Many people living in Silicon Valley might not realize that there's a whole slew of wonderful wineries right in their backyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains … places like Ridge Winery (one of my favorites and also one of my wine clubs), Picchetti, Hall Crest, and Thomas Fogarty Winery. Ridge and Fogarty sit on top of the Silicon Valley side of the Santa Cruz mountains and have absolutely *gorgeous* views of the entire Bay Area; on a clear day you can see all the way from San Francisco to San Jose. 

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend a Friday evening event at Thomas Fogarty winery that happened to take place right during sunset. I brought my camera with me in case some clouds rolled in and sure enough I managed to sneak out and capture this surprise of a sunset. I hadn't expected there to be any color in the sky but as I looked out towards San Francisco I noticed both clouds and fog rolling in. To my delight the fog created a mystical feel to the beautiful sunset at the winery. I tried to keep the vineyard in my composition to give a better sense of where this place is and how lucky these people are to own a vineyard up here. I was really impressed by how quickly the fog rolled in.

This is a single exposure brought into LR4 and Photoshop CS5 with some minor doging/burning, and some color/contrast alterations (removed the HiTech Reverse ND Grad color cast and then I spent a long time trying to make the green feel right and eventually gave up as the best I could do). 

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
48mm, f/13, 3.0 sec, ISO 200
HiTech 0.9 Reverse ND Grad + HiTech 0.9 Soft ND Grad
Eagle Ray
Sunrise at Eagle Falls
Lake Tahoe, California

After Willie and I watched a beautiful sunrise over Emerald Bay we decided to see how easy it would be to find Eagle Falls. We knew the general location but we weren't sure if the falls was right off the trail, if we had to hike down to the lake, or what. Turns out it's a LOT easier to find than we thought. And by a lot easier I mean it's literally right off the road (you can see it from the road). 

It took a little bit of log walking, tree branch hangin' on, and some skippin' over rocks to get over here to get the composition we wanted. By this time the clouds were rollin' in pretty heavily and although we knew the color was gone we thought we'd have some fun taking some test shots anyways. I wanted to use the branches to add some interest to the foreground as well as frame the shot. I figured the tree could help frame this as well. The sunrise managed to squeak through the clouds and made a couple light-rays which I thought were neat. 

Without any color I thought I'd turn this into a black and white and see how it turned out. I used Nik's Silver Efex Pro to convert this and pull out some contrast and structure in the photo. Did I over process this? After the conversion I tried to pull the contrast back even more but I think a lot of that motion was in the RAW file from the long exposure. Thoughts?

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/9, 0.5 sec, ISO 100
B+W Circular Polarizer + HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND
My mom turns 60 today (March 27th). Since it's kinda a big deal my dad decided that all the boys should come home and surprise her with a big celebration. I flew back to NY on Friday morning, my dad picked me up, I dropped him off at the train station and arrived home pretty early. When I got to the house I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. Oh right, it hasn't worked in 20 years. Our dog, Dash, knew someone at the door and started barking frantically but my mom still didn't come to the door. It took a phone call, in which she answered "What are you doing up this early?!" (she assumed it was 3 hours earlier on the west coast) to which I replied "there's a package at the door" (me). She was pretty stunned when she opened the door to find her first born waiting. We continued surprising her throughout the day. My middle brother pretended he didn't know I was coming and therefore he hadn't planned on taking the train home from his job in NYC. Lastly, my youngest brother flew home from his freshman year at the University of Michigan (somehow I brainwashed him into going to the same college where I graduated with 2 degrees). When the youngest walked in she got all teary and it was just perfect. We threw her a nice party the next night and it was great to have the entire family all together for a couple days.

The first thing I did when I got home was take a nap. The second thing I did was take a walk along the beach. I left my camera at home and immediately wished I had it on me. It had started to cloud up and I saw this as a perfect chance to practice using my Lee Big Stopper. I drove back home, grabbed my camera, got distracted a bit, and went back to the beach. By this time Mama Nature continued her hatred of me and decided to blow all the clouds away. I got a couple long exposures snapped before all the big clouds had dispersed. The only clouds left were the perfect sunset clouds. Realizing my chance to *FINALLY* get some sunset photos I told my mom I wanted to come back (a third time) for sunset.

My mom and I arrived at the beach hoping for a beautiful sunset. Mama Nature must be REALLY mad at me because by the time we got back to the beach the clouds had pretty much rolled in and blanketed the sky. Luckily there was a small opening in the west and I held my breath that we'd get some color. Luckily I was in for a treat and the sky managed to turn a nice color before disappearing. There was no awesome surf like in California so I had to try something a little bit different. Knowing there was no good water motion I put the Lee Big Stopper on and tried to turn the water into glass, catching the reflection of the sunset in the water. While the photo exposed I sat back and ate some fried chicken with my mom, on a picnic blanket on the beach. What a nice way to start the weekend.

Happy birthday mom!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/10, 5 min, ISO 250
Lee Big Stopper + HiTech 0.9 GND
Marshall's Sunset
Marshall Beach
San Francisco, California

Willie and I went to Marshall Beach a couple months ago hoping to catch a nice sunset above the Golden Gate Bridge (GGB) but came home with nothing. Willie went back and although there was a nice sunset along the coast, again, the GGB stayed gray. Hoping that the 3rd time one of us visited this beach would be the charm I grabbed my gear on Easter Sunday and drove up to Marshall Beach. I arrived about an hour early and was pretty excited. The entire drive up to SF had some beautiful looking clouds and I was hoping it would stay that way.

Of course as the sun began to set the fog started to roll in … sorta. There was just a wispy patch here and there. Some bigger clouds rolled in with some boring texture (see the photo above), but nothing too awful. Along the horizon a couple clouds rolled in and I sat there praying that they wouldn't block the sunset. To my horror, some thickish clouds perched right in front of the sun and blocked most of the sun from getting through. Enough light made it to give a slight glow to the clouds and a little bit of recovery in Lightroom brought out the purple and pinks that you see above (I only brought saturation up +5 in this).

Trying to figure out a composition for this shot was a little difficult. The area that I had scouted previously and really liked was under water. Low tide was finishing up just as I arrived sunset would be on its way towards high(er) tide. The problem was I didn't know how high it would rise before sunset. There were a couple options for compositions and I ran the risk of choosing some rocks that would either be completely underwater or perhaps completely void of water. Fortunately I chose wisely and the waves covered these 4 sets of rocks just as the sun was setting. I liked that they made a little semi-circular shape, with the rock in the back left getting some spray from the incoming waves. Overall I was pretty pleased with how the photo came out! 

On my way out I was approached by another photographer, Tran Mai, and we had a nice chat about photography, photo-outings, and places to shoot. Apparently there's a big SF crowd that gets together often and she mentioned she'd include me in the future. I'm excited to meet the crew!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
28mm, f/14, 1/5 sec, ISO 200
Lee Filter Holder + 0.9 HiTech Soft ND Grad
Streaking Bonsai
Bonsai Rock Sunset
Lake Tahoe, Nevada

Ever since I first saw David Shields photos of Bonsai Rock I had wanted to shoot this location. For the past couple years I've leased a ski cabin with several of my friends for the entire winter. Being so close to Lake Tahoe and Bonsai Rock you'd think it would be easy to get here to shoot. Last year I had made it up to the eastern shore to photograph Bonsai but I waited too long into the year (it was almost May when I made my way over there) and the sun was setting more northerly than I wanted. Willie and I decided to do a Tahoe photo weekend at the end of March, hoping the sunset would still be south-westerly enough for a nice sunset. It was storming all week and we rented a 4 wheel drive SUV for the trip. Hoping to get a great sunset we departed plenty early from my cabin and arrived at Bonsai Rock pretty hopeful.

Random side-story: I've driven all over California (and many parts of the United States) over the past 6 years and although I've seen "Caution: falling rocks" signs, I've never actually really paid attention to them or had any issues. On the drive to Bonsai Rock the car in front of me rolled down his window and started waving his arm, pointing to the left, signaling something that I couldn't figure out. He quickly changed lanes and that's when I realized what he meant …. GIANT F'ING BOULDER!!!!!!! There were 3 cars to my left and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the giant rock. This thing would have seriously messed up the SUV. So Mr. Car in front of me … thank you! 

We arrived at Bonsai Rock with plenty of time before sunset. Last year there was so much snow that the lake level rose fairly significantly. Even with a dry winter the lake level is much higher than we really want for good Bonsai Rock photos. The beautiful foreground rocks are mostly under water. Willie and I spent a couple minutes looking at compositions but with so few rocks exposed we were pretty limited and found our shots pretty quickly. 

We had plenty of time to kill before sunset and it was partially cloudy so I decided to pull out the Lee Big Stopper and see what kind of effect I could get. I set up a 3.5 minute exposure, clicked the button and sure enough, I got a super neat pattern in the sky. The water was pretty choppy and the long exposure turned the water into glass. Perfect! Now we just need a beautiful sunset and I'll repeat this. Unfortunately we didn't get a sunset (thick clouds blocked the sunset) but I did manage to get a nice long exposure photo! 

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
36mm, f/16, 3 min 20 sec, ISO 200
Lee Filter Holder + 0.6 HiTech Soft ND Grad + Lee Big Stopper
Emerald Jewels
Emerald Bay Sunrise
Lake Tahoe, California

A couple weeks ago Willie asked me to reserve the weekend of March 30, 2012 for a photo-trip. About the same time, my roommate and a bunch of my friends decided to make that same weekend a Tahoe get-away/ski-trip weekend. I wanted to do both so I convinced Willie to join and we'd shoot Lake Tahoe. 

We had been monitoring the weather all week and it seemed like every 5 hours the report changed. A large storm was rolling in but nobody could decide when exactly it would hit. We knew we wanted to shoot Bonsai Rock (which I have previously photographed) and Emerald Bay. Planning this photo trip turned into a nightmare because we weren't sure what sunrises or sunsets would be good and we couldn't figure out if the roads would even be open. The road to Emerald Bay had been closed all week due to snow / avalanche control but finally opened as we drove up to Tahoe. Friday night we drove to Bonsai Rock and had a skunked sunset (but I did manage to get a photo that I was happy with thanks to the Lee Big Stopper, coming soon).

Saturday morning we woke up at 5:15am (ouch), wiped the sand out of eyes and hit the road. I had done some research and found that Emerald Bay was not only really close to our cabin but also pretty easy to photograph. Just pull off on one of the turn-outs, find a spot that doesn't have trees, and shoot. We were the only ones on the road when we got to Emerald Bay and only a few cars passed us as we watched the sunrise. There were a LOT of clouds (as you can see) but we were lucky and an opening in the east allowed the sunrise to sneak through and light up the clouds. We were treated for a beautiful sunrise (finally Mama Nature played nice for us!). Thanks to a super massive wind that had blown in, Emerald Bay also had some neat wave action going on (which you can see in this photo). 

Willie used his new Singh-Ray Reverse ND Grad and was able to get a large dynamic range with very little clipping. My HiTech Reverse ND isn't as soft and was doing some ugly things to the hill on the left so I had to settle for 2 filters and some bracketing. This shot is a 2-exposure blend, although the underexposed photo was only used in the bright section on the right of the photo, above the mountains and below the clouds. 

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
24mm, f/18, 10 sec, ISO 100
Lee Filter Holder + (0.9 + 0.3) HiTech Soft ND Grad's
High and Low
Zabriski Point Panorama
Death Valley National Park, California


Willie, Zack, and I arrived at Death Valley in the evening, checked into our hotel, grabbed some food and began looking at the forecasts to figure out the details for our Death Valley trip. There was a chance that the clouds would roll into position in time for sunrise so we woke up before dawn and raced over to Zabriski Point. We were the first to arrive! Since it was dark and we hadn't scouted earlier, we setup where we thought we should be and waited for sunrise. As was the theme of the trip, we had no color in the sunrise except for a faint glow. The moon was full and setting and we managed to take advantage of that and capture a few shots with the setting moon (I did not pull a "Peter Lik" and place the moon in this shot).

As many of you know, Zabrsiki Point is a pretty mind-blowing place. There's some awesome shapes, amazing hills, snow covered mountains (although without snow), and just a giant escape. Behind the view here is Badwater Salt flats, the lowest point in the U.S. Above badwater, you can make out 14,000 ft mountains! Pretty insane to have the 2 juxtapositions in the same scene.

I decided that a single exposure couldn't properly capture this place and took a pano of Zabriski Point with the moon setting. A little bit of pink color came out in the sky and I absolutely love the shapes here! Rather than edit out the people, I thought I'd leave the other photographers and on-lookers in the photo in an attempt to give this place a sense of scale!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
Multiple Exposures at 35mm, f/11?
High and Low Zabriski Point Panorama Death Valley National Park, California Willie, Zack, and I arrived at Death Valley in the evening, checked into our hotel, grabbed some food and began looking at the forecasts to figure out the details for our Death Valley trip. There was a chance that the clouds would roll into position in time for sunrise so we woke up before dawn and raced over to Zabriski Point. We were the first to arrive! Since it was dark and we hadn't scouted earlier, we setup where we thought we should be and waited for sunrise. As was the theme of the trip, we had no color in the sunrise except for a faint glow. The moon was full and setting and we managed to take advantage of that and capture a few shots with the setting moon (I did not pull a "Peter Lik" and place the moon in this shot). As many of you know, Zabrsiki Point is a pretty mind-blowing place. There's some awesome shapes, amazing hills, snow covered mountains (although without snow), and just a giant escape. Behind the view here is Badwater Salt flats, the lowest point in the U.S. Above badwater, you can make out 14,000 ft mountains! Pretty insane to have the 2 juxtapositions in the same scene. I decided that a single exposure couldn't properly capture this place and took a pano of Zabriski Point with the moon setting. A little bit of pink color came out in the sky and I absolutely love the shapes here! Rather than edit out the people, I thought I'd leave the other photographers and on-lookers in the photo in an attempt to give this place a sense of scale! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: Multiple Exposures at 35mm, f/11?" href="javascript:openLB(1822873872,'',XLarge,'',1024,341);">High and Low
Zabriski Point Panorama
Death Valley National Park, California

Willie, Zack, and I arrived at Death Valley in the evening, checked into our hotel, grabbed some food and began looking at the forecasts to figure out the details for our Death Valley trip. There was a chance that the clouds would roll into position in time for sunrise so we woke up before dawn and raced over to Zabriski Point. We were the first to arrive! Since it was dark and we hadn't scouted earlier, we setup where we thought we should be and waited for sunrise. As was the theme of the trip, we had no color in the sunrise except for a faint glow. The moon was full and setting and we managed to take advantage of that and capture a few shots with the setting moon (I did not pull a "Peter Lik" and place the moon in this shot).

As many of you know, Zabrsiki Point is a pretty mind-blowing place. There's some awesome shapes, amazing hills, snow covered mountains (although without snow), and just a giant escape. Behind the view here is Badwater Salt flats, the lowest point in the U.S. Above badwater, you can make out 14,000 ft mountains! Pretty insane to have the 2 juxtapositions in the same scene.

I decided that a single exposure couldn't properly capture this place and took a pano of Zabriski Point with the moon setting. A little bit of pink color came out in the sky and I absolutely love the shapes here! Rather than edit out the people, I thought I'd leave the other photographers and on-lookers in the photo in an attempt to give this place a sense of scale!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
Multiple Exposures at 35mm, f/11?
High and Low
Zabriski Point Panorama
Death Valley National Park, California


Willie, Zack, and I arrived at Death Valley in the evening, checked into our hotel, grabbed some food and began looking at the forecasts to figure out the details for our Death Valley trip. There was a chance that the clouds would roll into position in time for sunrise so we woke up before dawn and raced over to Zabriski Point. We were the first to arrive! Since it was dark and we hadn't scouted earlier, we setup where we thought we should be and waited for sunrise. As was the theme of the trip, we had no color in the sunrise except for a faint glow. The moon was full and setting and we managed to take advantage of that and capture a few shots with the setting moon (I did not pull a "Peter Lik" and place the moon in this shot).

As many of you know, Zabrsiki Point is a pretty mind-blowing place. There's some awesome shapes, amazing hills, snow covered mountains (although without snow), and just a giant escape. Behind the view here is Badwater Salt flats, the lowest point in the U.S. Above badwater, you can make out 14,000 ft mountains! Pretty insane to have the 2 juxtapositions in the same scene.

I decided that a single exposure couldn't properly capture this place and took a pano of Zabriski Point with the moon setting. A little bit of pink color came out in the sky and I absolutely love the shapes here! Rather than edit out the people, I thought I'd leave the other photographers and on-lookers in the photo in an attempt to give this place a sense of scale!

Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
Multiple Exposures at 35mm, f/11?
See photo in original gallery.