More Water & Wide Angles

I'm frustrated that I'm encumbered by my back/shoulder/neck pain - I really want to go on another hike in search of altitude to experiment with my new wide angle lens, but I get too sore after just a few hours of plain vanilla walking.  Fortunately, I have a physical therapy appointment scheduled and I don't even care what kind of sadistic stretches or exercise they may impose, I just want to go back to normal.

In any case, we went to breakfast on the beach and then walked along the tide pools before it got too hot - basically the same easy excursion as this one a couple of weeks ago.  Unfortunately, our efforts at timing to arrive with low tide were foiled by some kind of storm surge that sent waves crashing up to what is normally the high tide line.  My boyfriend had a waterproof point & shoot on hand, but I wasn't willing to risk my DSLR to get much closer to the water than I did.  I am excited that he's totally gotten sucked into my photography hobby and basically going to take my D3100 body off my hands so I can upgrade to a D3300 without feeling too guilty over a purchase I don't need, but would love, given the 5 FPS (frames per second) multi-shot capability (vs. 3 FPS on the D3100) and the panorama mode.

In any case, the shots I took didn't really made me feel like I used the wide angle well - part of that is due to the fact that I shot in kind of bright mid-morning light and corrected in post by tweaking the lighting & saturation, but more experimentation and practice is clearly needed.

The waves from the surge were huge & the low tide only intensified the effect

Crash

Crash II

More Waves

Active Shooting Hours: 1.5 hours

Review Hours: 2 hours

Hours to Date: 165 hours

Wide Angle Lens Play

Where does the time go?  It's amazing how when life gets a little hectic, time just slips by.  I got rear-ended a couple of weeks ago and while mostly okay, have been nursing pain in my back, neck, and shoulder, which put a damper on photographic adventures and birthday plans.  Still, I've managed to keep my head up, largely because of taking on the 100 Happy Days Challenge, which is all about finding small happy things every day.

Anyway, I got a wide angle lens for my birthday, which apparently is one of the most difficult lenses to use well.  After the first foray with it, I can see why - it's really hard to get close enough to let it work its magic and make powerful images that pull the viewer straight into the scene.  I definitely need to practice more and in general, get out during optimal lighting times.

I'm still behind in posting (muscle relaxants really knock you out) - more pics from birthday adventures to come.

Peering into a pool

Rocky shore

Finding hearts in the sand

Wide angle of a lake - probably my best use of it yet

Active Shooting Hours: 3
Review Hours: 1
Hours To Date: 155

Risking Life, Limb, and Camera

"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again" - John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Philosophically profound, but not very practical... take your eyes off the waves for a few seconds and next thing you know, you and your fancy (but not impervious) camera are soaked.  Since tide pools exist where rocky outcroppings trap water, to explore them and their contents properly, you have to clamber up wet and slimy rocks covered in sharp mollusks.  One miscalculated step or a particularly large wave and you're cold, wet, and potentially injured if you sprain an ankle or cut yourself on a sharp edge.  I also did not have great footwear for this trek - flip flops, the only "shoes" I had in my collection that I was willing to get sandy and wet.  You could definitely pick apart the casual visitors from the frequent tide pool explorers... they were all properly shod with what I will call "hiking sandals" or just straight up hiking boots.  And after 3 hours of trying to maintain my balance on rocks in flip flops, small muscles in my feet are definitely making their presence known.

I really wonder how professional nature photographers (a la National Geographic) manage to get such amazing shots.  Wildlife generally are not very cooperative in holding interesting poses and when you move to compose a shot, they move away.  Additionally, timing for natural light and ideal conditions is a truly an exercise in tactical planning.  I've been wanting to photograph tide pools for almost a month now, but it took until today to hit the quadfecta of low tide, indirect light, not a million degrees out, and minimal traffic and people to get in my way.  And to manage that, I still had to set my alarm for 5am on a Saturday to get there by low tide at 6:53am.  Alternatively, I could have waited until 7:24pm, but there definitely would have been more people and low tide at that point would have been at 2.2' instead of the 0.6' it was this morning and I probably would have seen less with more of the shore being covered in water.

All in all, still totally worth it.  Tide pools are so fascinating - temporal biospheres with flora and fauna that are exposed during low tide.  These organisms have to be hardy to withstand the pounding surf, exposure to the sun, and hungry predators for extended periods of the day.  Crystal Cove also had some volunteer docents who were able to tell me more about the plants and animals, which was an unexpected bonus to my morning.  They were surprised I knew a lot more about tide pools than the typical layperson, but I credit that to a marine biology class I happened to take as an undergrad and multiple visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium when I lived up in NorCal.

Tide pools

Pounding waves

Anemone

A shore crab

A fat 6-legged starfish and a completely oblivious seagull above

The tide, starting to come in

More from today at: http://thisgirlelle.smugmug.com/Photography/Tide-Pools/30521504_FrwHsZ

Hours to Date: 24

Work, Play, and a Birthday Beach Cleanup

My birthday happened to coincide with a work meeting this year, but since we had a beach cleanup planned for the actual day of my birthday, I decided to take today off instead.  After all, doing community service on your birthday?  Can't buy karma like that.  I might start that as a new tradition, it's a good feeling.

Random side note: today is the first non-holiday vacation day I've taken all year and of course, I racked up 6 missed calls and 7 text messages.  No wonder taking vacation stresses me out.  Baby steps though, next plan is to take a real vacation somewhere with lots of opportunities to bust out the DSLR.

In the meantime, I still found opportunities to get some practice in after our meetings adjourned for the day and during the beach cleanup.

A cold brew at Karl Strauss

Ringing in my birthday with my signature - Maker's ginger with a lime

A luau evening event wouldn't be complete without dancers!

Seemingly clean beach and yet we still managed to pick up ~60lbs of miscellaneous trash in the course of an hour and half. Pick up your crap, people!

Birds

Sandy cliffs, subject to water and wind.

Hours to Date: 15

Half Day Friday: Beach, Beer & BBQ

One of the many perks of my job is the ability to take half days on alternate Fridays during the summer, and yesterday, we used it as a reason to throw a going away BBQ for a guy who's going back to school.  I'm pretty sure there is no better way to ring in the summer than with a BBQ at the beach, which I then rounded out with happy hour with a friend who happens to live in San Diego.

The only casualty I incurred was some sunburn because I forgot to reapply sunscreen amidst moving around trying to take quality photos and make up for yesterday's laziness.

Still, despite the potential sunglasses-tan-induced raccoon eyes, added some time to this week and took some action shots instead of still subjects.  Photographing moving things reminds me a lot of skeet shooting... you follow the movement and then pull the trigger at the apex - in this case, once the subject gets into an interesting or visually striking position in the frame.  With the pier that juts into the water near the surfing area, I was at a pretty good angle to catch some surfers doing their thing.

But first, an homage to BBQ, which I'm pretty sure should just be its own food group entirely.

Chicken & hot links: yum, yum, and more yum!

Fall-off-the-bone ribs.

Surfer, f/8 @ 1/500s, with the colors punched up a little in Picasa because the light was kind of bleh

Just about to lose his balance - I love the reflection of his shadow in the water.

Fat pigeon that bullied 2 other pigeons out of the way for this perch - what an asshole. Nikon D3100 f/5.6 @ 1/640s.

Pier, as seen from the beach

If only life decisions were this simple - colors punched up in Picasa

Hours to Date: 8

Lazy Photography is No Bueno

I was a lazy photographer today. 

I used all my energy, productivity, and willpower on getting up early after a night of insomnia, getting to work early, and then convincing my tired self to follow through with my plan to play pickup beach volleyball after work anyway.

I brought the camera along just because I thought I could get some time in before and after, but it ended up an afterthought once I got to the beach and I sat down with my feet dangling off the boardwalk in the sand.  All the interesting subjects were far away and all I wanted to do was sit.   Especially given the fact that I was about to run around chasing down errant balls all over the beach, I had no desire to move around and think artsy fartsy.

The light also wasn't quite right since it was still roughly 2 hours to sunset and overcast... and 30 minutes and several haphazard shots later, I ended up with utter mediocrity. 

But hey, at least I got in a great workout.

Hours to Date: 6.5

This would have been much more interesting if I hadn't been lazy and actually went up to the umbrellas

Lifeguard tower by Main Beach