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The path to Refrigerator Canyon near Helena, Montana has fun little pools filled with the crisp cool water of a fast moving creek. But you have to get off the path and get low to really appreciate these tiny oases.
My favorite style of photography to shoot has been long exposures for a bit over a year now. Before leaving for California in the middle of December, I picked up a 10 stop neutral density filter to supplement my filter collection and it arrived in the mail on our way out of town. For me at least, long exposure can be as frustrating as it is fun, particularly when using the ND1000. Wind, glare, misty air, and quickly fading light all factor into the success or failure of a shot and there's always some loss of color and clarity when blocking out so much light.
My most memorable shooting days so far have come at Venice Beach. I love Point Mugu down near Ventura County for long exposures and I'll always have a soft spot for Malibu Pier but the skies and sunsets I got over a series of visits in January and February in Venice proved to be the best. Venice was nearly empty on each visit this past winter, only getting crowded one hazy sunday afternoon and briefly during the first sunset I saw here. That first sunset in late January was arguably the best I've ever seen and the reflections from the colorful, overcast sky worked well for shorter shutter speeds in addition to very long exposure shots since wind was minimal.
This was shot on my second visit to Venice Beach and ended up being the 2nd of 3 great trips here. Haze got heavier in subsequent trips and after a series of lousy skies and conditions, I finally decided to take a break from Venice and wander towards Huntington Beach before returning regularly to Malibu and the surrounding areas. I only encountered a few people on this outing and I'm still a little unsure why beaches in winter are so empty here. I guess if you grew up on the East Coast like I did, 60's and breezy seems perfect. I prefer to shoot away from people (in large part because I never want to disrupt someone's view or experience somewhere) and generally will try to go to these less popular destinations but I never expected to find the major beaches empty as well.
It's cooled off a lot here the last couple weeks which I hope means cloudy, vibrant sunsets will return soon. It hasn't been cloudy at all but at least the haze has started to decrease. The cooler air and breeze are also helping Scotch breathe a little easier at night. He's getting old fast and hasn't had an easy month. Fall and winter can't come soon enough for him or for me.
▪️WHEN & WHERE▪️
Venice Beach
Venice, California
February 23rd, 2016
▪️SETTINGS▪️
Canon T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@18mm
f/5
16 seconds
ND1000
CPL
Such shocking faces! Their anger needs an outlet.
Submitted for FlickrFriday's "Low Angle" and Macro Mondays' "Plugs and Jacks" challenges.
Spotted on a walk in the lovely alpine village of Hanmer Springs.
Many and varied flypapers used in processing. A before after and texture recipe is now on the Flypaper blog.
When I go back through a lot of my photos in the archives, there's a few things I look for each time, like photos I may have overlooked, shots I didn't know how to edit or shots I've posted that I always wanted a do-over on. When I figured out how to color correct and fix noise better and practiced editing enough to get the most out of a shot, there suddenly became a large group of shots that I wanted to revisit and see if my current style could fix the issues I disliked or turn a shot I had set aside into something I could share.
This is not uncommon for me since I've only really been learning to shoot manual for 2 or so years and there's still plenty of things I don't know how to do or do correctly which is frustrating. Whether it's a particular type of photography or editing skills I haven't yet figured out or something technical which I probably skipped over or never knew about in the first place.
I took this a year ago and when I shot it, it was one of those perfect type of moments that I still remember quite vividly even now. This was my first Venice sunset, my first chance to shoot reflections, and happened to be one of the very best sunsets I've ever seen in my life. I was there for hours and stayed from well before sundown to well after getting skies that constantly changed color. I spent so much time trying to edit this to reflect what I saw that day because I made a lot of mistakes with settings and technique and had trouble getting the color corrected. I also didn't have any color noise software and in my attempts to get rid of the problems, it often led to really saturated and high contrast images that had lost a lot of the detail along the way. The photo was well received on here and I was so happy with it when I posted it and for months after, it was really was one of my very favorite shots. However, as my editing skills improved, I began to like it less and less and so a year later, I gave it another chance from scratch and this was the result. It still might not be perfect, but it's a much more accurate representation and I'm much happier with it.
This day was extremely memorable, as I mentioned. The sky was colorful and overcast all afternoon and I was there long enough to shoot just about every type of photography I could think of--long exposures, faster shutter speeds, silhouettes, reflections, panoramas, night photos and of course an amazing sunset. I had been in California about a month and had mostly hovered around Malibu and the large views from the scenic overlooks up and down Mulholland Drive. I don't remember what made me come here that afternoon, but it led to Venice becoming my most photographed and default location in California.
LOCATION
Venice Beach
Venice, California
January 27th, 2016
SETTINGS
18mm
ISO 100
f/4.5
1/160th second
CPL
Anamorphic pinhole taken with cylindrical coffee can on 6x18 cm Kodak Polymax paper. Exposure about 10 min. Developed in old D-76.
... You forget they’re really gone. You forget the past six months even happened. Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that crazy? Then you catch yourself . . . and it’s real again.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door
Since i roam the countryside a lot and discovered, that i liked the look of my camera in bnw mode, i decided to start a new series of rural bnw photos.
Some will be dark and moody as this one, some will be friendlier.
They will all be completely unedited (only cropped) and otherwise straight out of cam.
You can find the complete album
here .
I hope you will enjoy it.
find me at
2/365v4
This is the hallway in building I live in. 9th floor out of 17. It looks pretty industrial. It is build a bit like a prison with a yard in the middle :)))
~ Dag Hammarskjold (Swedish Statesman and United Nations official)
I know it's been a busy week for most of us, so any plans for the weekends?
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, FRIENDS!
Explore FP~ Thanks a lot everyone for your visits and wonderful comments. Thanks, Sis Riena ♥ for the headsup and Trixie (8 SiMpLe RuLeS) for saving a screenshot.
A ruined 16th century tower house near Kilmartin. It was built by reforming churchman John Carswell, who was Rector of Kilmartin, Chancellor of the Chapel Royal at Stirling, and later titular Bishop of the Isles. Although he notionally built the castle for his patron, the Earl of Argyll, Carswell actually intended it as a personal residence. On Carswell's death it passed to his patron. The castle was blown up by Royalist forces in 1685 following the 9th Earl's failed uprising in support of the Monmouth Rebellion against James VII.
Hermosa Beach and that sunset seem to look better to me each time I view my photos froom Monday evening. I reviewed them all quickly after getting home, but didn't go through them in too much depth. I picked a photo to edit from the set and when it was done, went through to find the next image. It usually isn't until I have posted a bunch from a shoot that I start to appreciate what I saw a little more. I could see it was a mostly cloudy day all Monday and for the 90 minutes I drove around trying to figure out where to wind up, the sky never gave me any indication it would let up before sundown. Sometimes out here that is the case, and it's always disappointing--especially if I sat in tons of traffic--to realize that the clouds won't be there anymore when I arrive.
As I mentioned, I'd only to been to Hermosa Beach once back in the first week of January and it wasn't much of a visit. Scotch and I drove all over exploring from about 5am until 2pm and my experience at Hermosa was limited to the main road, high above the beach and closer to Redondo. It was about 5pm when I got to the edge of Manhattan beach on Monday night and the main street that passes by all the shops and restaurants was nearly empty and only a few people were wandering around. Even the parking lot closest to the Pier at Hermosa was half empty which was obviously great. Maybe it's just a sleepy town at the beginning of a week in Autumn or maybe I just had a really lucky experience.
The sky was great and once set up, I realized I would be mostly shooting into the sun which was above the pier and going in and out of a mass of clouds. I assumed I could just get some shots off and play around with positioning and exposure times until the colors got richer and the sunset was near. I love that the sunset is early again since it means I don't have to get home after 10pm but I do wish it would last longer. I think Autumn sunsets will always be my favorite type, though I prefer autumn overall anyway. Cool, colorful overcast weather is hard to beat for me whether here or back in the DC area. I could see the magenta tones forming before sundown in the middle, though they were more of a salmon color at that point. With the yellow sky getting more and more saturated with orange, I knew those pinkish clouds would darken soon as well and once they did, it was quite a sight.
I always have the same dilemma at sundown: get a more natural looking sky and detail in the surf with a series of shorter exposure times or go all in and take a small handful of multi minute exposures that could produce amazing results but also have such little margin for error at this time of night. There's always a chance that long exposures could waste the entire sunset for me and even if they are exposed well, could still make the scene more boring if the clouds move too much and become a solid dark mass or too little and then they look much worse than a quick shutter speed. The shorter sunsets mean much less time to experiment and it was hard to estimate exposure time since the light was fading with each shot and it I couldn't exactly made adjustments solely on the previous capture. Of all the long exposure images I took on the day, maybe only a half dozen or so turned out how I was hoping.
It was a little breezy and the waves were bigger than what I got used to in Venice. Further, the shoreline was shorter and more sloped so I wasn't going to be getting the mirror like reflections I grew to expect on the flat shores of Venice. Here, however, the sun dropped straight over the pier which is impossible at Venice where it seems to only break between Venice Pier and Santa Monica Pier. If the sun was closer to that pier, I'd have spent a lot more time by it rather than sticking to that one area I always shoot. The waves at Hermosa were great though and after setting up for a quicker shutter time, I'd fire off a few as the they began to crash hoping there'd be a couple that were more interesting than the rest. This was one of the images I liked the best from that set. I shot a few with the flat surf pushing towards me after the wave broke but this was one of the only times I got a wave that curled completely across the frame. The sky was the highlight for me obviously, but this wave really adds a lot of drama to the otherwise peaceful shot. The solid yellowish orange lined up with the short section of beach in front of me and it created a really nice golden sheen on the wet sand.
I wish I had moved around more while here since it didn't occur to me until I was packing up to leave that I literally 100% of the shots I took have the pier just to my left and are at relatively similar focal lengths. I was happy in this one spot and by the time the sky looked like this, there were others lined up with their tripods to my right and my only option would've been to run far to the right or quickly set up far to the left of the pier. I think my spot on the beach was ideal though and was glad I was first on the scene. I have another half dozen or so images from monday night that I have yet to post and tonight I headed to Hollywood Bowl Overlook for a little so I will mix some of those in as well. With the overcast weather finally back, I have a feeling my shooting will start outpacing my posts again which I'm really thankful for. Months of cloudless skies and hazy sunsets depleted my archives and I'm ready to fill them back up :)
▪️WHEN & WHERE▪️
•Hermosa Beach Pier
•Hermosa Beach, California
•October 24th, 2016
▪️SETTINGS▪️
•Canon T4i
•EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
•@22mm
•ISO 100
•f/9
•1/8th second
•CPL
Lately, this is what Scotch most often looks like and what he's most likely doing when at home. He relaxes or sleeps most of the day which I suppose is what many senior dogs do anyway. About a year ago, he was just starting to show some signs of Laryngeal Paralysis, a disease mostly in older dogs (Labs in particular for some reason) that sort of acts like later in life asthma I guess. His ability to breath can't quite match up to his energy level and it's often tough to get him to relax.
The only treatment is a pretty specialized procedure that is both very costly and comes with a variety of risks that would be a bit higher for him. Outside of the heavy breathing when he's active, he looks and acts like a much younger dog and still wants to run around any chance I give him.
He has his good and bad days now, with issues only really arising if it's too hot out or he exercises too much. It's hard to believe when I look back through pictures how different he was a year ago when he was still running hard off leash, swimming and desperate to go on car rides for as long as possible. Now I keep him walking at a slow pace, he'd rather lie down on the beach and I have to trick him to get him in the car. I always wondered when he'd slow down a bit and I certainly admit that while I researched extensively before getting him back in the winter of 2003, I didn't really account for how much energy a hunting dog has when paired with a non hunting owner. It only took about 12 years for us to achieve a similar cadence while going on walks.
As long as he's still happy, I look forward to as much time as we have together and a few more adventures along the way. The weather has been a lot cooler here in Los Angeles the last week or so--especially at night--and I'm hoping Fall arrives sooner than later. My brother and I couldn't make it to Big Bear Mountain with Scotch this past winter and that's the first thing I'm looking forward to doing when snow returns there.
Here's hoping that winter starts a bit early this year and ends a bit late :)
SCOTCH: age 12
Hollywood, California
August 21st, 2016
SETTINGS
Canon T4i
EF40mm f/2.8 STM
ISO 200
f/2.8
1/25th second
This morning, my best friend Victor appeared with this patio umbrella and stand that he acquired (for free). It matches our other red patio umbrella! Best of all, I put it on the landing of the stairs down to the garden. It tilts, so I can position it to completely block out the ugly mausoleum the new neighbours call a "house". Yay! Next, I will try to find a fountain to block out the noise, since their completely concrete walls and back yard reflect all their sounds right at me.
The We're Here! gang is visiting Low Angle Shots today.