Posts in Category: ocean
3/10/2009
Sunset Cliffs, San Diego CA (click for SmugMug views)
Another recent shot from San Diego. There is a tiny city park along the cliffs behind the Nazarene College on Point Loma, overlooking the Pacific. I found my way there while waiting for the military gate on the road to Cabrillo National Monument to open. The cliffs are heavily eroded, relatively unstable earth, carved by water into intricate shapes that always remind me of Stalagmites, and the flowing formations of calcite found in caves. In this shot the formations form a strong foreground for the open ocean ocean and low clouds, with the deeply shadowed side of the jutting headland taking the midground.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.6 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I pulled back the sky with some Recovery, added Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel, and use the Sharpen landscape preset. A good deal of Fill Light was needed to bring up detail in the shadowed headland. Since the sky was still too light, I applied a very selective Graduated Filter effect reaching down just beyond the horizon, and set to about -.6 EV (exposure). This darkened the blue of the sky and made the clouds right on the horizon stand out more.
From San Diego 2009.
PS.
This image was selected for Flickr’s Explore when I posted it to my stream there.
3/8/2009
Mission Bay Marina, San Diego CA (click image for Smugmug views)
We will get back to Scotland, but I thought I would post some fresh work for the next few days while I process images from San Diego (where I am a the moment).
The conference is at the Mission Bay Marina Village Center, just behind the seawall and beyond the flood control channel for the San Diego River. This shot was taken through the wall of windows which is directly behind my booth, sort of between customers.
From past experience it is a pretty typical San Diego sunset. I used my tip the camera up and let the meter read the sky, lock exposure, and reframe trick to bias the exposure for the sunset at the expense of the foreground.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F4.0 @ 1/80th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto, manually biased for the sky.
In Lightroom I used some Recovery for the sky (even with the bias it was still too light). My usual Presence settings: Added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset. I also cropped off some at the bottom to eliminate some distracting foreground detail.
The sky was still too light and the foreground too dark, so I applied Lightroom’s graduated filter effect. This is my first experiment with it, and it is indeed a powerful tool. I drew the filter over the image from the top and adjusted the level of the effect to get the sky to where I wanted it. That still left the foreground too dark, so I added Fill Light in the Exposure panel. The result is an image that is a very close approximation of what I actually saw out the window. I will be using the graduated filter effect a lot more now that I have some experience with it.
By the way, exposure is only one of the parameters you can change with the graduated filter effect. You can also change the brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, or sharpness. Powerful tool indeed.
The image is from the new San Diego 2009 gallery.
2/17/2009
Rime of a different kind
Another Rime shot from my morning image trek the other winter day. This one is straight on macro, taken from inches away, at the edge of a small ditch along the border of the marsh, where the falling tide had draped the rime over grasses. The blue sky behind sets the image off.
You would have laughed to see me down in the ditch, my flip up LCD flipped up, bent over double to get the low angle, with the camera strap clutched close to keep it from dragging in the ice. The camera was millimeters from the ground, and angled slightly up. I teetered there for several moments taking a series of shots as I varied the angle and distance from the edge of the ditch. I don’t know what anyone watching might have thought I was doing, but I can tell you I was very thankful for the flip out LCD on the H50 along about then.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equiv.). F5.6 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Snow Scene select and -.7EV exposure compensation. Macro mode.
Recovery in Lightroom for the transparency of the ice. Clarity and Portrait sharpen preset. Vibrance for the grasses and the sky. Cropped slightly at the bottom to eliminate out of focus ice.
2/16/2009
Rime
Sea water is not supposed to freeze…too much salt. Of course it does freeze under the right conditions. Here, as the tide fell, it left a delicate rime of ice on the grasses of the marsh behind the dunes, beside the river, and, mixed with fresh river water, froze at least to semi-solid in the tiny pool in the hollow of the grasses.
I took many shots of different rime formations in the low sun of this February day. I like the composition of this one, the strong slanting line which divides the smooth patterns of the water from the frozen grasses…which I feel sets off the delicate detail of the bold swirling patters above.
This is another shot from the series I took on my very international trip to gather winter images at some of my local hot spots. Parson’s Beach in this case, about 2 miles from my front door.
Sony DSC H50 zoomed to about 100mm equiv. to crop. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. Snow Scene select with -.7 EV exposure compensation.
In Lightroom the image was cropped slightly on the left to remove a dark shaddow in the upper corner. Recovery to bring out the details in the rime. Some added Clarity and Sharpness, and a bit of Vibrance to pick up the gold tones of the grasses underneath.
2/5/2009
Jetty Point
Another from that intense afternoon at Jetty Point in Arcata California. The light was spectacular. The seas ahead of the squall were amazing. The wind took your breath away. And that literally breath-taking experience is what I attempted to capture. The standing stone of the Jetty dominates the foreground and anchors the image. The sweep of the violent sea behind provides the energy. The sunset touch in the clouds warms the scene just slightly and pins it in time.
Sony DSC H9 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/250 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Some color temperature adjustment was required in Lightroom to eliminate a slight blue cast from the cloudy light and to bring out the colors of the beginning sunset. Some Recovery for highlights. Clarity and Vibrance for Presence. Sharpened slightly.
From Northern California.
2/4/2009
Jetty Point
Jetty Point near Arcata California on a particularly dramatic afternoon. Squall coming in. Rainbows after.
The drama of the waves is what I was after here. Water in violent motion. I might have tried a long exposure to turn the water to silk, but I feel that this frozen instant does a good job of capturing the power of the sea.
Sony DSC H9 at 31mm equiv. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Recovery in Lightroom for the clouds and other highlights. Vibrance and Clarity. Sharpen landscapes preset.
From Northern California.
1/16/2009
Fog Lights
This is one of those images that attempt to capture an illusive and subtle effect of light…with more or less success. Fog over the beach with the sun playing in and out.
A fairly straightforward Programed Auto exposure, but with more than usual post processing.
Sony DCS H50 at full wide (31mm equiv.). F5.6 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I used full Recovery to pull back all but the highest highlights in the fog, and then Clarity to reinforce the transparency of the fog. Between them, they got me back very close to the naked eye visual effect. Moderate Vibrance brought out the blue behind the fog, and I used the Sharpen landscapes preset.
From the Around Home Gallery.
1/8/2008
Eye Level
The Terns and Gulls on Bowman’s Beach on Sanibel Island FL are clearly used to humans. Shell pickers work the tide-line and so to Terns. Standing, a really close approach is possible…but I wanted to get down to eye-level with the birds for a different perspective. The flip out, articulated LCD on the Sony DCS H50 makes this kind of shot much easier…otherwise I would have been on my belly in the sand. The main difficulty was that I had to have the Programed Auto set to -1.7 EV for the blindingly white highlights in the sun, which made the LCD hard to see. Still, I got several effective shots (imho).
I especially like the contrast between the birds in the foreground here and the beach bathers in the background.
Sony DCS H50 at full tele (465mm equiv.). F8 @ 1/3200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto with -1.7EV. (Note that 1/3200th second! We are talking bright light here.)
Recovery in Lightroom for the highlights, and I actually had to increase the exposure about a stop (-1.7 left the whole scene somewhat dark). Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped slightly for composition.
The image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.
1/4/2009
Sanibel Light
This is a second view of the Sanibel Lighthouse against the New Year’s Day sunrise. For this I zoomed in enough to isolate the light, but keep significant sky. The sky behind the light, being well away from the sun, was not as spectacular, but still colorful. Exposure for the sky, metered in Programed Auto Wilde Matrix setting normally, since the sky dominated the image anyway, and I was willing to let the lighthouse go black. A pretty straightforward image.
Sony DSC H50 at about 400mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Recovery in Lightroom for the sky, added Clarity and Vibrance (Vibrance picked up some orange in the sky), and used the Sharpen Landscapes preset. Cropped some water out. Originally I put the horizon at the 1/3 line…moved the horizon lower and let the light itself have the power point.
The image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.
12/16/2008
China Cove, Point Lobos, CA
Point Lobos is one of the most imaged pieces of real estate in the world, made famous by early 1900’s painters, and then rediscovered by Edward Weston and his followers in the 70’s. Much of Weston’s most recognizable work was done in what is, after all, this tiny little stretch of convoluted coastline. When I had to be in Watsonville, just 40 miles away for several days, at the Monterey Bay Birding Festival, I made plans to spend a day at Point Lobos. Only when I got there did I realize how small it really is. I passed it going down. I was looking for this jutting cape off the coast, with miles of coastline, and I could not see anything like it on my map. I literally disbelieved my GPS when it said the little gate in the patch of forest was the entrance, and drove on down the coast highway into the Bir Sur country looking for the real Point Lobos.
Of course, once inside the preserve, I realized that Weston’s miles of coastline are just folded up tight into the small acreage of the surface park. I spent the morning there and I have posted a somewhat more lengthy version of the experience at Point Lobos Morning on Point and Shoot Landscape.
This image is one of my favorites. The intense green of the waters in the coves, seen from above, was fascinating, especially combined with the red-brown of the kelp. This is China Cove.
I zoomed the Sony H50 out to about a 160mm equiv. to frame just the water, a bit of rock, and a corner of the ever-present invasive, but colorful, ice plant. F4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I pulled back the highlights with Recovery, which gave the water depth, and accentuated the green highlights. Added Clarity and a little more Vibrance than I normally use, but I was after the visual effect I remembered from being there. This is a close approximation. Sharpen Landscape preset.
It is a rather abstract image, more about form, color, and texture than about the actual water and weed, but I think it has impact. One of these days I will make a print of it for the wall.
It is from the Point Lobos Gallery.