7. The Idea That Good Fortune Will Arrive At Your Doorstep: You need to go out into the world and actively look for fulfillment. You cannot take a backseat in life and expect things to happen for you. Appreciate the life you live, and be grateful for what you have. Value each minute of every day. Live like there’s no tomorrow, and make the most out of any situation.
Surf Shack – Windansea // La Jolla, California
I wandered around Windansea Beach till late in to the evening. Long after the sun had gone down, the beach had cleared of all other visitors. This is the time of night when you can really just enjoy the sights and sounds of the wind and the water. I took this time to sit in the sand, relax, and when it felt right, play around with some long exposures to really capture the motion of the clouds across the sky.
I think my favorite images tell a story. Not necessarily the whole story, but just enough to be interesting.
Surf Life – La Jolla Beach // San Diego, California
I’ve been sitting on this photo for a while now. Not sure why, every time I looked at it in my library I enjoyed it, and thought about it, but wasn’t quite sure what it needed. I love having a good log of photos to be able to work on just for that reason, sometimes a photo just takes time.
I plan on owning a surf board one day. And maybe a little shack near a beach, somewhere warm and tropical.
I’ve been attempting something pretty new for me here lately, it’s the art of Ultra Long Exposure photography. The image below, it was taken at a third of a second. That’s 0.333 seconds. The longest that I’ve tried last week was over 500 seconds, over 8 minutes! As you can imagine, the truly interesting thing about this is going to be the contrast between the motion of certain parts of the scene, and the steadfastness of others. Clouds become streaks, water becomes completely flat, but many objects are steadfast. It should be a very interesting contradiction.
On the Edge of the World
Over the weekend I had some time to work on developing photos, and it was nice to get back to a California state of mind. Ending up on the beach each evening after work was a great way to wind down, and there were a number of nights with perfect sunsets. I use this saying a lot, but it was like being a kid in a candy store, running around trying different compositions.
We all know how much I love behind the scenes stuff. I end up spending as much time shooting the ‘behind the scenes’ photos from time to time as much as the actual scene itself! First off, the camera itself, and you’ll see that I’m using live view to double check the horizon line. I find that it does a pretty awesome job of doing a quick check that all my lines are even with the world. Also, settings are at f10, ISO100, 10 seconds.
I don’t really do snakes, so I’ll be honest, the walk out in the dark was a little unnerving. Especially since I had to do a fair bit of climbing around to get to this spot.
Heading out by flashlight. Definitely feeling like a snake is around every corner.
Broken Bow by Sunset
If it wasn’t for having heard from my photographer friend Glenn that there are RATTLESNAKES hiding around here, and that he had recently seen one on a trip in, I would have completely enjoyed this spot.
Taken just after sunset, I was a little concerned that the night was going to be a wash, with clouds moving in before sunset. Luckily, though, the belly of the clouds were low and had a nice glow from San Diego. So we’ll call this an ‘artificial sunset’.
This seems like the next logical step in training you folks to create beautiful photography. I’ve already got the “Complete Guide to HDR – Start to Finish“, which goes in to all the details of starting your journey in to HDR, but I realized that there really isn’t a great source for the folks that have been shooting for a while, and really have their own techniques and tricks for developing their photos. The Advanced HDR tutorial will fill that need.
What Lies Below
Wow, I’m kind of surprised I haven’t published this shot earlier… Maybe I did over on Facebook or Google+, but it hasn’t hit the blog yet for sure. I really love this photo, a beautiful sunset forming over La Jolla beach, the waves rolling in, and these amazing rock formations laid out in front of you. I was actually having a nice conversation with another photographer during this shot, so it would be extremely interesting to see his version of the scene. I definitely have met more photographers during my month in California than I have anywhere else, which was great. I personally thing that the more people out there expressing themselves thru this medium, the better. Anyways, I digress. Looking down in to these different pools was fascinating, and as I proceeded to reach my hand in to one, I saw something moving in the shadows… I didn’t think about reaching in again, just observing. 😛
You know what I don’t like about Fahrenheit? That it’s harder to spell than Centigrade. Also, that with centigrade, you know when it’s unfortunately cold, as soon as it get’s 0 or below, not that fake tricky cold where you think ‘oh it’s only 25…’. Also, it was -9 F today on my phone when I went outside, so I’ve got a current grudge.
Adrift on the Tide
I thought I would share something today to remind me and you all (except those warm weather folks) of the warmer feelings in life. The sunset seemed to last longer than many that I’ve seen before, providing time to hope to and fro between rocks, trying out new compositions, adjusting and trying again. While I like to try and get my shots right and perfect the first time, you’ll sometimes notice things as you’re going that don’t flow, or a feeling that isn’t quite right. That’s okay! Just set up to be able to fix those things, and try again. No one is going to come tell you that you’ve taken too many photos. As you progress, though, I think everyone finds themselves shooting less, seeing what their camera will see before they even look thru it, and knowing how the scene will play out.
