Coastal Rocks/Wave Explosion Combo |B&W|

The previous 2 images combined.

This image is a combination of the previous two shots. Still no interesting sky, but since the exposures and black & white treatment were identical, it was easy to combine them and use the best of both for one image.

 

According to some folks, this photo is a lie or at least cheating.  I would argue that I didn't create unnatural circumstances in this image and therefore have not cheated and since I'm writing about it, clearly not lying either. Both parts are realistic and this particular image probably occurs naturally. I couldn't capture it in one image when I was there because the waves weren't coming in fast enough. By the time a wave was coming ashore, the previous one had already dried out, leaving no reflections.

 

In the end, whether it's cheating or not, I think the resulting image is greater than the sum of its parts!

Wave Explosion |B&W|

An "exploding" wave.

Last Friday's photo and this photo came just seconds apart at Crystal Cove State Beach/Park. Both were shot about a half hour before and 180 degrees from my Sunset at Mordor Beach image.

These rocks were lit up with a nice warm, golden glow as the sun set behind me, unfortunately the sky was a flat grey due to the cloud cover. Much of our day here at the coast had been overcast with uninteresting skies and despite my previous follies with black & white images (as mentioned in my last post), I planned for these images to be black & white. Or at least solid attempts at it.

Since the sky was so uninteresting in this direction, I slowed down my shutter speed to catch the motion of the waves and create an interesting element in the foreground to draw attention away from the sky. In the previous image, shot as a wave receded, you can make out the reflection of the rocks in the wet foreground sand. In this image, the next incoming wave hit the smaller rocks with a good amount of force. The slower shutter speed caught the full "explosion" of water created by the wave slamming into the rock.

Both images can be found in my Just Black & White gallery.

Coastal Rocks |B&W|

Coastal rocks at Crystal Cove

I don't create a lot of black and white images. There I said it. And if you want proof, take a look at my Just Black & White gallery. (I know, I need to work on the title for that one. It's not very imaginative is it?) There's only 6 images in there. And while there may be a few others floating around my site that need to be included in this gallery, that only works out to 8 or 9 images out of the nearly 500 up for public viewing!

The reason? I'm still trying to figure out how to do it. "But black & white imagery has been around forever! What are you trying to figure out?!" I hear you asking. Well, even though black & white is where photography started, that doesn't mean it's easy and it all boils down to color theory and the contrast between different colors. What shade of gray should this blue be? How about that blue? And this red over here, what should that look like? It's all subjective and entirely up to me to decide when making the conversion.

Photoshop offers a myriad of tools for creating monochrome magic (new gallery title?!) and each allows you to precisely control what shade of gray individual colors should be. And that's part of the problem for me. There are just too many options and I would much rather be out taking photos on a nice day then experimenting in Photoshop.

This image is the result of a fairly quick and easy method I recently invented (and by invented I mean, I thought about trying it only to discover it's been around and on the internet for quite some time now). After checking the various color channels, I found the red channel in the RGB spectrum held the best looking image and deleted the green and blue channels, resulting in a monochrome representation of the information held in the red channel. A contrast adjustment, some sharpening and a little dodging to further improve contrast and the image was done.  For such a simple process, the results are rather nice, if I do say so myself!

Sorry to bore you all with the technical talk, more information about the location will be in my next update.

Sunset at Mordor Beach

It's really Crystal Cove State Park

OK, so I didn't really travel to Mordor for this shot. Not only is it a dangerous place, but it's also quite fictional. Once of the first images that really WOW'd me when I first picked up my interest in photography was a beach scene with a large, prominent rock in the foreground, misty waves and fiery sunset sky. Maybe I had just watched Lord of the Rings for the hundredth time on TBS, but the instant I saw it I thought, "That looks like Mordor Beach!" Forget for just a minute that you never actually see a beach in Mordor in any of the movies. Suspend your disbelief!! If there had been a beach in Mordor, it probably would look a lot like that image all day long. When I first saw this capture on the LCD on the back of my camera, I instantly thought, "Mordor Beach! I have found you!" And while I'm not going to discuss whether I like my image better than the one I remember seeing so long ago, if Mordor had a beach, I imagine it would look very much like this!

This image was actually taken at Crystal Cove State Park near Laguna Beach. I had heard and seen good things about the Laguna Beach area, but had never had the chance to visit until last week when my friend Jay was in town to do some photography. We arrived early and did our best to scout out some locations prior to sunset even though there was heavy cloud cover and little chance of seeing a sunset through it all. The beach has a literal treasure trove of photographic opportunities. Everywhere you look, enormous rocks jut upwards from the sand just begging to be included as a dramatic, striking foreground.

This image can be found in my California Coastline gallery.