The Storms Subside

I have a feeling this shot is going to find it’s way in to black and white, that was the original vision I had when taking the photo. But when I first looked at the photo I realized the 8 second exposure (using a Singh-Ray Neutral Density Filter) created a nice blend of soft muted colors in the water and sky. I’ve had the Vari-ND filter for quite awhile, but had really forgotten about it until I read a blog entry by Cole Thompson regarding his use of the filter and some of the techniques he uses. It made the perfect distraction while we were hiding under the pier when a quick burst of rain returned on Friday. An interesting aspect of this photo, outside of the sense of movement in the clouds and water, there were 6 foot choppy seas when I took this photo. By stretching the photo out to 8 seconds it turned a angry ocean in to a quiet and calm sea.

Unfortunately we weren’t so lucky in trying to capture snow capped mountains on Saturday after the storm subsided. Too lazy to wake up early in the morning I decided to wait until the afternoon. We drove out to Kenneth Hahn State Park near Baldwin Hills hoping for an iconic view of downtown LA backdropped by a snow capped Mt. Baldy. Alas, the haze had already rolled in and we were left with enjoying watching Sierra go puppy crazy at her first ever trip to a park. Fresh rain, new sights and sounds…brain overload! While in search of dinner we were going to venture to Pink’s Hot Dogs, but decided to take a quick look for the Kogi Truck. Turns out the Kogi Truck was two miles from…our house in Fullerton! So we hightailed it out of LA and headed home in time to wait an hour to eat Korean BBQ tacos from a roach coach…and it was fantastic! Well, it was quite good, I think the glass of 15 year old Scotch we shared with the group back at home was better.

The first copy of the book has arrived and I’m quite pleased for the most part. The photos themselves turned out fantastic. Unfortunately the cover of the soft cover version looks like it easily warps so I’m going to have to change it to a hardcover version. The upside being the cover won’t warp, the downside being it is going to be a tad bit more costly.

Enjoy the week

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 9:22 am and is filed under landscapes, random musings and tagged with blurred, huntington beach pier, january 2010 winter storm, long exposure, neutral density filter, pacific ocean, pastel colors, silky effect, storm clouds, vari-nd singh ray filter, water. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.