Lava Entering Pacific Ocean Kalapana, Big Island, Hawaii During my visit to the lava flow on Hawaii's Big Island I took more photos than I care to admit. While it was still bright enough I was able to take a number of photos that captured the beautiful motion of the water as it gobbled up the lava, sucked it up, and continued and added it to the growing list of ingredients for the soup known as Island Making. As I watched the lava enter the ocean I was amazed at how much of the water continued to glow even after the lava had entered the water and cooled off. This also created a huge amount of toxic steam. Not only was the steam bad to breath but it also covered the composition I was trying to photograph. Most of the photos I took this evening were covered completely in steam. I patiently waited for some of the steam to subside and for the 3 or 4 lava streams to be visible. Using a 0.8 second shutter allowed me to capture the motion of the incoming wave. If you ever have the chance to get to the Big Island while there's a lava flow I *highly* recommend taking a trip out to the lava. Do not attempt to go here on your own. It is extremely dangerous and should only be visited with an experienced guide. There are many tours of varying prices that are all quite excellent! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm: 155mm, f/10, 0.8 sec, ISO 500
When you head to Marshalls Beach in San Francisco it's hard to ignore how the Golden Gate Bridge. It's right there, in front of you, screaming for your attention. There aren't many beaches that get much closer to it. OK, maybe I lied a little bit: you might be drawn to the nudists who dot the beach, but the bridge is right there! So let me say it felt a little bit weird when Willie and I turned our backs to the Golden Gate Bridge and instead focused our attention on the fallic looking sea stacks that dot the far end of the beach. We had hoped the clouds would stick around for sunset and give us a nice colorful sky, but alas, Mama Nature toyed with us and the clouds disappeared as the sun faded from view. It did, however, provide a nice little stretch of orange and red sky, while the waves crashed into the rocks and provided nice movement in the foreground. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8: 17mm, f/11, 1/3 sec, ISO 100
Cracker JackSunset at 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
