"Happy New Year" Road Trip to SF w/ Anders

Darnell...... Get Up!

Seal Beach, CA

(click for larger image)

Often you have heard me speak of all the things you can do to improve your photography and not get stuck in a rut. Yeah Yeah for those close to me know that I have been in exactly that for the last 3 weeks.... "a rut"

So after having sit downs with my go to girl (Denise) for the last few week to talk about the directions of my photography I was beginning to turn the corner yet need a little more motivation. Soooo I reached out to a fellow landscape colleague Jade Aldrich (see link).  I bombarded him with all my problems, showed him a few images and just talk about photography. After a few he suggested that he might be interested in bouncing out to shoot.... Me? I was thinking to go home, cuddle up with Nalo and go to sleep (lol) Just as we were about to crawl into bed "the phone rang" It was Jade..... he gave me 30mins to get ready. uuuugh!

We made it out to Seal Beach Pier just before sunset, we agreed that we would shoot looong exposures and the big f-stops, with neutral density filters. All was going well until the sunset and then there was darkness under the bridge so we switched to longer exposure time (up to 2 minutes) and painted with light from Jades Mag-light he conveniently had in the car. It was a good night and might be the first step to getting out of the rut.

HUNTINGTON BEACH PEIR (underside)

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On this dank cloudy day, just before sunrise, the sun broke through for about 5min and I was able to catch the warmness of the pier. Timing and sun affects everything, and this time of the morning is just one of the best time to shoot (the other is just as the sun is setting)

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Lesson Learned:

After this  images (from a series) were captured under the pier, I realized that I was on manual focus and what looked out of focused in the view finder produced this result as well as the others I captured. I did not change a thing and tried to learn from my mistake by attempted to learn what was right about my setting.

18mm  f/22  4.0sec (raw file/no edits)

HUNTINGTON BEACH

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Jan 29, 2011 0520 wake call from Denise to go out shooting. I just love break through days and this day was a successful day. I am working on new skills and using new tools to improve my skillset.

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Skill: Patience

Tool: Neutral Density Filters to extend my exposure time; outcome streaming clouds and silky milky seascapes.

The above image was shot at f18 10sec 19mm (w/o filter (1/20 of a sec) it would have been a quick exposure, capturing the moment as it happened @1/20 of a second opposed to capturing the scene for 10sec and capturing the waves as they come and go.