The Waiting Game

Sorry I've been absent from the blog. I often find myself wondering what to write, and then days pass by so quickly. I guess my only excuse is that I never kept a journal growing up, so I haven't formed the habit yet. :)

As I enter my second year of dedicating more time to landscape, or what I like to call seascape, photography, I have learned more about what it takes to get the shot.

You can have a "good eye", as some people call it, and this is very important. How you see the world around you helps define your imagery, your style.

You can know all the best spots, and certainly this can give you an edge.

You can have all the best gear, and that can help, but isn't necessary.

You can post process your images like a seasoned professional, but even then there is no guarantee of success (which by definition is different for all of us).

But even with all these factors, Mother Nature still has the upper hand. And thus, there is the waiting game. Nature, wildlife and landscape photographers, or at least those who have been doing it long enough, know that the elements can easily elevate your images to another level.

You see, I have been bookmarking spots along the coast near Santa Cruz using Stephen Trainor's The Photographer's Ephemeris. I must warn you first, if you are the type of person who enjoys randomly getting to a spot and guessing at where the sun or moon will rise or set, then don't click that link. You will be tainted forever if you do. :)

Anyway, the Photographer's Ephemeris is a wonderful tool for figuring out when the sun and moon will line up with the world around you. I personally feel it will help my photography in the long run. And it fuels the waiting game.

I've known for several months now that a local spot will have the sun setting down the middle of a rocky channel. Up until recently, I've been busy with the end of the art show season, and therefore my trips to the coast have been limited. I finally got to my spot, but the cloudless sky and my late arrival resulted in an unsuccessful shoot.

Fast forward three nights later, and the window of opportunity for my shot narrowing, and I got there just in time to catch the sun, a wedge of a cloud just happened to pass through the scene (and promptly left a few minutes later), and I got my shot.

I have another spot bookmarked for late October sunsets further up the coast. There is this nifty arcing reef of rock jutting into the Pacific. I want to get a shot with the sun ending that arc. The waiting game never stops.

Growing as a Photographer

First off, I don't want to come across in any of my posts as an expert or that I know it all. I think that photography, like any art form, should be an evolving process. Hopefully, we will all get better at it as time goes on.

Two aspects of my personal photography growth that have stuck out in my mind are:

1) Revisiting familiar sites with different conditions and
2) Implementing new post processing techniques

I often get excited about shots I take at a new location. Everything is so, well, new! And if the weather is half way decent, I think the shots are even more valuable, possibly portfolio images that I may try to sell. This is a personal pitfall, and a rut that I recommend anyone try to avoid.

My advice, visit those same spots over and over again. Go in different seasons, go in the sunshine as well as the inclement weather. Try different lenses. Try different angles. Shoot in portrait orientation if you tend to shoot in landscape and vice-versa. Work the spot for all you can.

I cannot tell you how many images I have shot that instantly out do the ones I thought were the "best" from a specific location.

As for the post processing, well, let's just say that I do believe how you process an image is a vital tool to any photographer wishing to make their images look better. I am still in the stages of my learning where experimentation and using new tools are the norm. I have yet to develop my own unique work flow. Maybe I never will. But as my confidence grows with how I process my images, I hope to start writing tutorials to help others get better as well.

One tutorial that I found easy to follow as well as showcasing a process I think I will use more regularly is Tony Kuyper's luminosity mask tutorial.

When shooting landscapes where the sun is part of the final image, the extreme dynamic range can be difficult to handle. My first attempts at taming the bright lights of the sky was investing in some good graduated neutral density filters.

But sometimes these filters aren't quite enough and the sky is still too bright. I started bracketing shots for the sky even with the filters in place. Back home, I would blend all or parts of the images with better exposed sky using Photoshop's layer masks. This could be problematic if the clouds were moving, even slightly. Blending with layers in Photoshop is fairly easy, but not if the subjects in each image don't line up. Having 60% of one image and 40% of another won't work when they aspects of the image aren't aligned.

Another method is using the lasso selection tool and feathering the edges of your selection to make your adjustment less noticeable. Even still, the edges of your adjustment could have a very noticeable transition from light to dark. I also found using the lasso tool tedious and too difficult to use.

Luminosity masks find light and dark pixels and automatically create smooth transitions to the adjustments you apply to them. You can fine tune dark and light areas of your image with precise control and the effects are much more natural looking and seem more problem free.

Depending on where you are in your Photoshop skills, I highly recommend experimenting with luminosity masks if you shoot landscapes or seascapes such as myself.

Panther Beach Clean-Up - Sunday May 24th 4-6pm

One of my most favorite places to shoot is a little stretch of coast a little more than half way from Santa Cruz to Davenport along Highway 1. It is also a popular beach where people like to party. The somewhat steep trail requires too much effort for employees of the County of Santa Cruz to want to deal with permanent trash cans and their maintenance, so the trash tends to pile up on the beach.

It is frustrating and sad to witness such disrespect on such a wonderfully beautiful beach. As summer approaches, I can only imagine it will get worse. On my last visit there, just a few weeks ago, I carried up about 20 pounds of trash and recyclables. There was more, but being alone, I didn't want to spend my entire day on trash duty.

That is why I am writing this blog entry. This Sunday, May 24th from 4-6pm, I am organizing a group along with Ivan Makarov to help clean up Panther Beach. We will provide gloves and bags, but feel free to bring your own. We will comb the beach for two hours, then stick around to shoot photographs until sunset.

I hope you can join us, and I look forward to this being the first of a monthly event. If you plan to join, let me know how many people you are bringing and simply leave a comment on my blog for this entry. Thanks!

View a slideshow of my images from this beach for a glimpse at its rugged beauty.

View Larger Map

Keep Shooting!

The title of this post stems from a common question I get (and others I'm sure) when out shooting. That question is "Get any good pictures?". I often reply "I'm working on it". Well, the other day, a man replied back "I guess you'll get something good if you keep shooting long enough".

To a degree, this is true. You can't get a good photo if you don't go out and shoot. You have to "keep shooting". But it certainly isn't blind luck either.

The shot above was taken after two SCUBA dives that didn't yield any "great" images. I then shot wildflowers in the remaining sunlight. Ok, but nothing too inspiring. I then scouted three different locations before choosing my final shoot for the day.

And the sunset certainly delivered! I did get a little lucky with the vivid colors, and the calm ocean and lack of wind allowed for a relaxing session. I did not have to worry much about waves and salt spray on my camera gear. But I kept shooting, and came home with a keeper.

Rediscovering the Past

My recent focus on landscapes along the coast has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience, an epiphany of sorts. I have found inspiration in the coastal beauty near my home and the exploration involved in finding new locations has rejuvenated my photography.

In this process, I enjoy scouting out beaches and coves I have never been to before. Discovering a spot that has existed for millennium but is brand new to me is indeed very exciting. Kind of like that feeling you get when you start dating someone you really like. I am infatuated with finding new spots.

But the last couple days, I have found myself going back to spots I felt I knew, places I camped at and visited frequently, albeit in my youth over a decade ago. The top shot is from Davenport Cove, the beach directly in front of the town. The shot below is from Scotts Creek Beach, just a few miles north of Davenport.

Scotts Creek was a favorite camping place of mine and later was a field site for an intertidal class I took in college, so I have many fond memories from here. It is truly inspiring to find new beauty, and to see a familiar place with new eyes looking for ways to capture all the angles and light.

Now, I am rediscovering the past, and it's like running into an old friend. There's so much to catch up on.

Spring Has Sprung

I've been catching up on my sleep as the sunrises these days have lacked some serious "umph", Instead, I've been noticing all the flowers I drive by on the way to work.

Specifically, there are some dense poppy groupings within walking distance. So on my lunch break yesterday, I sat down on the sidewalk and zoned out on some poppies.

At first, I was shooting with my new 35mm f1.8 lens and getting some nice "in their element" kind of shots. Then I started noticing the subtle shades of yellow on some of the individual flowers. I switched to my 105mm macro lens and stacked a combination of Nikon's 5T and 6T diopters for increased magnification. It really is enjoyable for me to sit and create something abstract out of a common sight.

And for those wanting more technical details, I was shooting hand held in Aperture Priority Mode so I could have the ultimate control over the depth of field. The camera then chooses the shutter speed. I made sure to keep an eye on the shutter speed, though, as it was windy out, and if it got too slow, I would need to change my ISO to maintain a fast enough shutter to freeze the movement.

I also kept an eye on the camera's histogram. Metering can be tricky in bright sunlight, and occasionally, I had to dial in exposure compensation, both positive and negative depending on the conditions, to get the results I wanted.

Listening to the Inner Voice

In my last entry, I touched on the refreshing feeling of shooting with a new lens, forcing my perspective with a new visual tool. Less than 24 hours later, I found myself stagnating over shooting another seascape.

Running on little sleep, I got up for sunrise with my ritual of sticking my head out the front door looking for clouds like a groundhog looking for its shadow on groundhog day. I drove up the coast only to drive back down again. Feeling disinterested, I pulled into Four Mile, a beach just north of Santa Cruz.

I set up as usual, found some mildly interesting compositions, but after just a few minutes and only nine clicks later, I packed up the wide angle lens.

You see, I kept hearing this voice inside my head. It was compelling me to try something new. Wave panning. It is a technique where you choose a relatively slow shutter speed like 1/4 second as in the photo above, and slowly pan the camera and lens with the direction of the wave.

The success rate is very low, and exposures were tricky. But I listened to that inner voice, and this time it didn't require spending money on a new lens as I had the right tool already.

A new kind of photographic learning experience, and a technique I hope to improve upon in the future.