Adios, San Clemente!
An image of a moving train leaving San Clemente’s train station. I saw the train coming from a distance and I was hoping that it was going to make a stop at the station, which it did. At that time I already developed this image in my head and I switched to shutter priority mode (very rarely do I do that) and I started to experiment with different shutter speeds while it was slowly approaching, I used that to judge (more…)
Trees & Track
A view from San Clemente’s train station overlooking the palm trees that form a corridor around the track. A few yards after the station ends, the track runs right against the ocean so I can only imagine that one would enjoy the scenery from the ride. I decided to go with the vertical layout as I thought all the lines converging down the middle would draw the viewer’s eyes down the track way more than had I gone with the landscape layout.
Western White House
It seems that I’m on a mission to explore Southern California as yesterday I made my first visit to San Clemente with a good friend of mine. San Clemente is the most southern town in Orange County before the start of Camp Pendleton, it got its world fame by former US President Richard Nixon. Rumor has it is that he dreaded being in Washington, D.C. and he tried to do as much business as possible out of his San Clemente estate; which was commonly nicknamed as the “Western White House”. Even though this is not the view that his estate would have overlooked, this is the famous “San Clemente Pier” located in downtown San Clemente. Its a really beautiful town, if you’ve never been I would highly recommend a visit. I wanted to take a great sunset shot but it was very apparent that the clouds were coming in and they were going to blank the sky, 15 to 20 minutes after that the sky was completely grey!
Watching a colorful sunset
They say that no two sunsets are the same and the more I photograph them the more I tend to agree with that! This one was definitely a colorful one full of orange and red hues, I caught a dog owner admiring the scenery and I thought they’d make for a more interesting image 🙂 This was taken at Laguna Beach back in November of last year.
Laguna Beach Historic Lifeguard tower
Laguna Beach’s historic Lifeguard tower, I found this little write up about it here:
…. The Main Beach Lifeguard Tower is a treasured Laguna Beach icon, and many claim it is the most photographed and painted structure in Southern California. The tower is a locally significant structure not only to Laguna’s artists but also to local historic preservationists.
In the 1930s, the city took an old tower from a nearby filling station and moved it to the community’s main beach to create a two-story lifeguard tower. Following a major renovation in the early 1970s, the lifeguards have handled most of the tower’s day-to-day maintenance. By the late 1990s, city officials began to recognize that the tower needed another major renovation….
Calling it the day
I took this image a few weeks back in Laguna beach. It was one of those magical November days in Souther California, the temperature during the day was mid 80s(F)/30s(C) which was just incredible. To no surprise, everyone headed to the beach for the day to soak up the sun. However as soon as the sun started to set, the temperature was dropping exponentially and what you see is the mad rush to head home. In the span of 20 minutes it went from a gorgeous day to “lets hurry up and call it the day”! The sunset after was just magical, unfortunately I didn’t have my tripod on me and I was really cold so I wasn’t going to enjoy my time 🙂
Looking at Irvine
Spent Thanksgiving dinner with my friends in Orange County, it was hosted at one of “the guys” pad and this is their view! Not bad if you ask me 🙂
Laguna Beach
I haven’t been to Laguna beach in a long time, yesterday I paid a visit to my friend who is visiting herself. Spent most of the day shooting her baby and catching up but I snuck a couple of pics this beautiful town and this is the first. In my opinion the two must see beaches of Southern California are La Jolla & Laguna Beach in that order; maybe I’m biased but thats what I would recommend 🙂 The other famous beaches draw crowds for the attractions and not the scenery like the two that I’m recommending.
We have a winner
A few weeks back I shared a few shots I did for a friend of mine who is an interior designer. While she did the “design” of the house, me & her husband were taking pictures for her to use in her portfolio. Even though I’m a few weeks late (blame it on being over worked :)), she was just recently awarded the 2011 “Emerging Designer of the Year” award by the American Society of Interior Designers – Orange County. So I just wanted to dedicate this post to her and say Congrats Lynsey, please make sure that you check out her website
Here is the full set that I provided for her to choose from: (more…)
Extras
These are some of the “extras” from the interior shoot that I did a few days ago for my friends. These shots were flagged as secondary choices if the requested shots didn’t come out; it took me a really long time to get to these as I’ve been really busy with the thing that pays the bills in my life 🙂 I’m lucky to enjoy what I do and then have a hobby that I enjoy even more. Hope to return to more regular posts soon…
Interior Design
A friend of mine asked me to help her with her Interior Design portfolio by shooting one of her projects and I wouldn’t turn such an opportunity down because I love to help, and also because I was flattered that they would consider using my work to showcase her work! I had suggested that she should try to use HDR for this kind of shoot if she didn’t have the budget to invest in strobes and thats primarily why I was asked to help, I’m quite comfortable with this type of photography. The place was in Aliso Viejo so I had an hour drive that somehow I turned into an hour and a half by getting lost, something about men not asking for directions… 🙂 (more…)
Putts
A dog is a man’s best friend, in this case putts is a woman’s best friend. I actually met the owner because putts came running towards us years back at Laguna beach when we were playing beach volleyball. He’s a great and friendly dog, looks mean but all soft on the inside. More often than not he’s in the above pose watching whats going, when required though he’ll intervene 🙂
This was taken back in May when we were hanging out almost at the same spot we all met, the wind was blowing and I thought I’d snap a couple of pics of the little fella 🙂 (more…)
2 Rivers Photos 