Peaking Through
One of those really colorful sunsets at Laguna Beach, we were just walking back to our cars and my friend told me to look back through the trees and look at the sunset. The camera was already on me so it was just a matter of taking an image of all that great sunset, luckily there was also a little break in the cloud for the sun to peak through which gave the image an anchor compared to blanket of grey across the horizon! Anyway, I hope you that you like the final product 🙂
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.
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 🙂
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.
A Day at the beach
Spent this Saturday at Laguna Beach, shooting my friend’s new born baby girl. While doing that we were also watching a CBVA tournament. I’ve been to previous AVP events and I really struggled with keeping the players in focus, I thought I’d try a few shots while the tournament was going on. I told one of the players that I’d share the pictures here, so here they are:
Starting out the series with the shot that made us approach the player, we thought she would at least like to have this one:
This was earlier in the day, she immediately stood out with her vertical and power.
Anticipating the serve
This was a new game that was much closer to where we were sitting.
I set the AF to AI Servo, I focused the center point on her shoulder blade and kept her in focus throughout the serve! I find that when AF is set to AI Focus the motor tends to go crazy trying to focus on the subject if they stand static for a period (which happens a lot in sports). I was actually impressed that I never lost focus of her through all that wire:
And while all of this was going on, the dolphins came by 🙂
If the players want a copy of the image without the watermark, contact me and I’ll email you a copy
Seperated
Canon EOS 5D Mk II, EF 16-35 f/2.8LII @ 27mm , f/9.0 , ISO 200
This was taken at the Laguna Beach lawn bowling club. Even though I don’t understand the game I really appreciate how well maintained the grass is, its just so pretty! I’m really focusing more on composition these days and I thought this was really neet:
– You have the electric box in the bottom right as anchor for the image
– You eyes will guide you through the benches all the way to the Palm tree the splits the two courts, its actually not right down the middle but I tried to move around a few millimeters to help create that effect
– Finally the Palm tree off center to the left balances the electric box in the right.
I really didn’t like the cropped tree on the left but it is what it is… does this work? you like it? feedback is always welcome.
Technical:
– 3 Raw Images [-2,0,+2 EV] handheld and merged into Photomatix
– Adjustments in LR3 to bring more contrast into the pictures… the HDR process produced quite a flat image for me!
– Noise reduction in PS3 with Topaz Adjust filter set at 40% opacity <– This is a trick that I just picked up recently and its done wonders for me… just never thought of it!!
– One last adjustment in LR3 to bring back some of the shadows.
2 Rivers Photos 