River of Gold - Panther Beach, Santa Cruz (Explored #3 - Thanks!)

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All Californians know that we have been getting pounded by weather the past week and a half. I heard the Sierras received 8 feet of snow from this one storm alone. This is awesome news for our thirsty state, but it makes it tough on us photographers. Finally the storm broke yesterday so Jim, Diego, and I flew up the coast to finds us some photos. (I'll let Jim tell the story of how he forgot his camera though :)

 

We stopped at our old faithful Panther Beach where all of the rain we'd been resulting in some awesome creek flow down on the beach and some super wet, reflecty sand. I gotta say the conditions were pretty awesome: great light, great water action, low tide, endless comps. It's fair to say we were all pretty jubilant.

 

So anyway, here's my "warm-up" shot from the night. I have another photo from later than I am really excited about, but I'm still trying to get the processing just right.

 

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Tech Notes on this Photo

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Nikon D300s

Tokina 12-24 mm

ISO100 - To buy me a longer shutter speed and glass out the water as much as I could while still keeping my aperture at f/9

f/9 - sharpest spot on my lens but still provides sufficient DOF at 12mm; helps defocus scratches, drops, and dust on my filters/lens

0.25 sec

12 mm

Lee 3-stop and 1-stop soft GND Filters, handheld at an angle in order to match the transition from sky to ground

 

Post-Processing

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In Raw Converter (Nikon Capture NX2), converted single Raw file once

- Very slightly warmed up image to enhance the golden reflections in the foreground

- Global contrast for added pop

- Slightly darkened and added contrast to the sky to add oomph

- Brightened very dark rocks in midground (view full size to see the detail there)

- Brightened foreground water and added some contrast to emphasize the ripples and reflections

- Local brightness/contrast adjustments to the crashing wave to tame the highlights

 

In Photoshop:

- Noise reduction via Neat Image

- Selective sharpening of sand, rocks, and bluffs

- Curves layer to slightly darken and enrich the sky

- Curves layer with s-curve adjustment for global contrast

 

Thanks for looking!

 

~Josh

 

Done