End of The Day

End of the Day - Sunset at Ocean Beach

I shot this image about a week and a half ago on the first evening my friend Jay was in town. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at Southbeach so Jay could try their legendary fish tacos then took the short walk to the beach to shoot the sunset.

The beach part of Ocean Beach isn't much to write home about photographically speaking. It's more or less just a sandy beach. But just a bit south of the pier, the beach quickly turns to pock-marked sandstone. That's good news for a couple photographers looking for interesting foreground subject matter. With the sun low in the sky, the sandstone picks up an amazing golden glow. When the sun is very low (as it is in the image on the right), only the top ridges pick up that glow, creating an interesting contrast between the lit up ridges and the rest of the rock.

This is a single image, no multiple exposures or blending or even Photoshop trickery. What you see here is largely what came out of my camera. I achieved this single exposure by using my graduated neutral density filter along with a graduated blue filter. Placing the darker regions of the filters over the sky allowed me to effectively darken the sky enough to capture the sky and relatively dark foreground all in one exposure. Typically, only the graduated neutral density filter would be used for this purpose, however I've found that no matter how "neutral" the filter is supposed to be, there is still a noticeable color shift when using it. The blue graduated filter doesn't reduce the exposure by much, but it does tend to shift the colors back towards reality.

Reducing the exposure for the sky, meant using a longer shutter speed to get the proper exposure. That's something I see as a happy side effect, especially along the coast. With a quick shutter speed, the water is frozen in place, but the longer exposure allows the water to show its motion. The wispy, flowing water shown is the result of longer exposure and begins to hint at the forces of nature that shape this part of the California coast.

After Dark - Sunset Cliffs

Only One Way Out - Stairs up from the coast, well after sunset

Amazing things happen after night fall. This new image is from a set entitled After Dark, that strives to document the look of the world once the sun goes down.

With very low light, an After Dark scene demands a long shutter speed to capture the details. This particular scene, from the foot of the staircase leading to the beach at Sunset Cliffs, required a 7 minute exposure (you read that right SEVEN minutes!) and was taken about 2 hours after sunset.

It was a full moon night, and I believe that added to the surreal pink clouds and purple sky, but a large cliff directly behind the camera blocked any of the moonlight from hitting the rocks or staircase. The light falling on those foreground objects is from a well placed, but far off, street light. So far off in fact that to the naked eye, it doesn't appear to be adding any light to the scene, but after 7 minutes of adding up, it's clear the light is on at least the railings of the staircase.

A few more After Dark images can be seen in this gallery.

The California Coastline

The rocks of Sunset Cliffs lit up at sunset.

Califonia's Coastline with the Pacific Ocean stretchs on for an amazing 840 miles. This new gallery on my site, approriately titled "California Coastline," is dedicated to documenting my exploration of this fascinating area.

This image is from Sunset Cliffs, just south of Ocean Beach, just before sunset. As the sun gets low in the sky, the almost sideways rays of light cast a warm golden glow on the sandstone of these cliffs. The tidepools in the foreground held just enough water between waves to reflect the blue sky and clouds from above.

I estimate that I've now explored at least 3 miles of coastline, and with only 837 more to go this gallery is sure to keep growing!