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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
Queen's Falls Queen's Bath, Princeville Kauai, HI I recently spent a week on vacation with a couple of my friends on the beautiful island of Kauai, Hawaii. We fit a gazillion things into the week but also found time for some relaxing days as well. One of my favorite parts of the trip, if not *the* favorite, was our visit to Queen's Bath. On the north end of the island, near Princeville, is an area of coastline covered my lava rocks. In one particular place, called Queen's Bath, the lava rocks have made a little pool that is protected from the incoming waves. Water flows in from the back, filling the pool with water, fish, and other goodies, but keeping it safe to swim in. This place has become so popular that a parking lot and official trail have been made to get here. If you do go here, be careful to ensure that you find the *actual* Queen's Bath and don't instead swim in one of the similarly but much more deadly pools that aren't protected from the incoming waves. There's a sign at the bottom of the trail stating that 28 people have died here. On the hike down to the falls I passed 2 waterfalls that I knew I just *had* to photograph. The first one, which is a bit larger, I may post later. The second, and smaller set of falls is this one here, where the water cascades down from the stream and creates 2 waterfalls almost back to back. The wide angle lens used here makes the falls appear somewhat larger than they are, but in actuality they're fairly small. After swimming in Queen's Bath we went home and showered and waited for golden hour to start. We returned, hoping that the setting sun would reduce the glare on the rocks and then I planned on shooting sunset from the lava rocks as well. For this, I chose a composition that would show the two falls in a somewhat "S" shaped curve, and threw on the polarizer to reduce some of the glare. From where I am standing, Queen's Bath is behind me and to the right. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S 29mm, f/11, 1.3 sec, ISO 100, Tripod B+W Circular Polarizer
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
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
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
Through a friend at work I got hooked up with another friend at work who's really into photography. I thought I was into photography but Willie is *really* into it, and I might be a little jealous. He's the guy who figures out the best light, the best time of day, the best day, and does all the calculations to figure out where to be and when. I went to Yosemite with him last month to shoot Horsetail Falls and I was able to make it over to Half Moon Bay with him to shoot sunset at Gray Whale Cove on Friday. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan. The tsunami hit California in the morning and most of the beaches were closed but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. His shot (see Flickr) came out great, but mine, with my less wide lens, is what it is. I'm not too happy with it and I had to do some fancy post-processing to get this to work but the final product isn't too bad. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. Willie really taught me how useful it is to have a good set of filters (graduated filters) with a filter holder. Time to go spend some of that good hard earned cash (hey, maybe I'll win the lottery and buy some gear and donate the rest to charity?). I liked this photo because the moving water shows some movement through the photo that draws your eye through this.
Whale's Last Touch Gray Whale Cove Half Moon Bay, California While digging through my archives the other day I came upon some of my Gray Whale Cove photos that I hadn't posted. I also noticed I had this photo which I had dismissed but a couple months later, I'm starting to digg. I've really been trying to get away from HDR now that I bought a set of ND Grad Filters but this shot became an HDR due to the fact that I *didn't* have filters during this photo shoot and I was going to miss the sunset in the sky if I didn't exposure blend. I love the movement of the water in this shot, but in my original version of this I thought the rocks had a little bit too much HDR feel. I went back and re-edited this to blend in the normal exposure rocks and make it more life-like. Back in March I went on over to Gray Whale Cove in Half Moon Bay to shoot sunset. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan that had happened a couple days prior. The tsunami hit California in the morning of our photoshoot and most of the beaches were closed, but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. During this photo shoot I realized how useful a filter holder and set of graduated filters really was. Willie got some great shots and all I got was a blown out sky! It was this photoshoot that convinced me to go buy my set of soft ND grads. After taking the photos by a set of rock outcroppings at sunset I decided I wanted to try a different spot with water going over the rocks. You couldn't really see much of the colorful sunset, since there wasn't much color in the sky, but I did take a couple photos and came out with this one. I liked the finished product. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 28mm, f/10, 0.6 sec, ISO 200, Tripod
Through a friend at work I got hooked up with another friend at work who's really into photography. I thought I was into photography but Willie is *really* into it, and I might be a little jealous. He's the guy who figures out the best light, the best time of day, the best day, and does all the calculations to figure out where to be and when. I went to Yosemite with him last month to shoot Horsetail Falls and I was able to make it over to Half Moon Bay with him to shoot sunset at Gray Whale Cove on Friday. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan. The tsunami hit California in the morning and most of the beaches were closed but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. His shot (see Flickr) came out great, but mine, with my less wide lens, is what it is. I'm not too happy with it and I had to do some fancy post-processing to get this to work but the final product isn't too bad. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. Willie really taught me how useful it is to have a good set of filters (graduated filters) with a filter holder. Time to go spend some of that good hard earned cash (hey, maybe I'll win the lottery and buy some gear and donate the rest to charity?). After taking the photos by the rock at sunset I decided I wanted to try a different spot with water going over the rocks. You couldn't really see much of the colorful sunset, since there wasn't much color in the sky, but I did take a couple photos and turned this HDR (I hate doing HDR's these days but this photo needed it … to get the sky and the movement in the water). I liked the finished product. This one is kinda boring since you can't see the sunset at all, but i liked the movement in the water. See the next photo for the zoomed in water movement/water-falls.
Through a friend at work I got hooked up with another friend at work who's really into photography. I thought I was into photography but Willie is *really* into it, and I might be a little jealous. He's the guy who figures out the best light, the best time of day, the best day, and does all the calculations to figure out where to be and when. I went to Yosemite with him last month to shoot Horsetail Falls and I was able to make it over to Half Moon Bay with him to shoot sunset at Gray Whale Cove on Friday. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan. The tsunami hit California in the morning and most of the beaches were closed but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. His shot (see Flickr) came out great, but mine, with my less wide lens, is what it is. I'm not too happy with it and I had to do some fancy post-processing to get this to work but the final product isn't too bad. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. Willie really taught me how useful it is to have a good set of filters (graduated filters) with a filter holder. Time to go spend some of that good hard earned cash (hey, maybe I'll win the lottery and buy some gear and donate the rest to charity?).

After taking the photos by the rock at sunset I decided I wanted to try a different spot with water going over the rocks. You couldn't really see much of the colorful sunset, since there wasn't much color in the sky, but I did take a couple photos and turned this HDR (I hate doing HDR's these days but this photo needed it … to get the sky and the movement in the water). I liked the finished product.

This one is kinda boring since you can't see the sunset at all, but i liked the movement in the water. See the next photo for the zoomed in water movement/water-falls.
Through a friend at work I got hooked up with another friend at work who's really into photography. I thought I was into photography but Willie is *really* into it, and I might be a little jealous. He's the guy who figures out the best light, the best time of day, the best day, and does all the calculations to figure out where to be and when. I went to Yosemite with him last month to shoot Horsetail Falls and I was able to make it over to Half Moon Bay with him to shoot sunset at Gray Whale Cove on Friday. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan. The tsunami hit California in the morning and most of the beaches were closed but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. His shot (see Flickr) came out great, but mine, with my less wide lens, is what it is. I'm not too happy with it and I had to do some fancy post-processing to get this to work but the final product isn't too bad. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. Willie really taught me how useful it is to have a good set of filters (graduated filters) with a filter holder. Time to go spend some of that good hard earned cash (hey, maybe I'll win the lottery and buy some gear and donate the rest to charity?). After taking the photos by the rock at sunset I decided I wanted to try a different spot with water going over the rocks. You couldn't really see much of the colorful sunset, since there wasn't much color in the sky, but I did take a couple photos and turned this HDR (I hate doing HDR's these days but this photo needed it … to get the sky and the movement in the water). I liked the finished product. This one is kinda boring since you can't see the sunset at all, but i liked the movement in the water. See the next photo for the zoomed in water movement/water-falls.
Through a friend at work I got hooked up with another friend at work who's really into photography. I thought I was into photography but Willie is *really* into it, and I might be a little jealous. He's the guy who figures out the best light, the best time of day, the best day, and does all the calculations to figure out where to be and when. I went to Yosemite with him last month to shoot Horsetail Falls and I was able to make it over to Half Moon Bay with him to shoot sunset at Gray Whale Cove on Friday. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan. The tsunami hit California in the morning and most of the beaches were closed but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. His shot (see Flickr) came out great, but mine, with my less wide lens, is what it is. I'm not too happy with it and I had to do some fancy post-processing to get this to work but the final product isn't too bad. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. Willie really taught me how useful it is to have a good set of filters (graduated filters) with a filter holder. Time to go spend some of that good hard earned cash (hey, maybe I'll win the lottery and buy some gear and donate the rest to charity?).

After taking the photos by the rock at sunset I decided I wanted to try a different spot with water going over the rocks. You couldn't really see much of the colorful sunset, since there wasn't much color in the sky, but I did take a couple photos and turned this HDR (I hate doing HDR's these days but this photo needed it … to get the sky and the movement in the water). I liked the finished product.

This one is kinda boring since you can't see the sunset at all, but i liked the movement in the water. See the next photo for the zoomed in water movement/water-falls.
See photo in original gallery.
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