Hapuna Beach, on the dry side of the Big Island gets about 5 inches (12cm) of rain per year. However, the Kilauea volcano mixes smoke ('vog') into the clouds resulting in awesome sunsets like this! Single exposure, minimal processing, reds were desaturated to retain detail, no HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/491056932...
---------------------------------------------------------
Settings etc.:
---------------------------------------------------------
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @23
0.4-second exposure @F13
LEE soft ND grads (100x150mm - 4x6in) 0.9 + 0.9
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 50
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
Small Slik Sprint mini II tripod
Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol-grip ball head
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Story
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hapuna beach is often rated as the #1 beach in the US, with perfect weather year-round, perfect sand and a water temperature of about 77 (25c) year round. Not too hot or too cold ever. It is a state park, so access is easy. It is also a great place to watch the sunset. Although rain clouds are blocked by the twin 14,000 ft (4300m) volcanos Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, clouds and volcanic fog ('vog') still wrap around them creating lots of thick atmosphere for dramatic sunsets.
About 15 minutes hour before this happened, I was on another beach when I realized that the sunset would look better on this beach based on the cloud patterns. So, I drove over here really quickly and ran across the beach to get to this spot. The was little drama after that however. It was a shooting gallery, as this overwhelming sunset developed and I got many versions of this, which I'll show later.
This version shows a little more sky than sand and sea, but I have other versions that show more sand. I'm not sure which look best so we will see later what you think.
ND grad filters were especially important and I had them angled about 45 degrees to darken the right side sky and even out the exposure. This could never be done in photoshop, and an HDR is a difficult thing to make natural-looking with so much red!
Check out this overview of Hapuna!
www.hawaiigaga.com/big-island/beaches/hapuna-beach.aspx
The map shows the exact location.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Other stuff
---------------------------------------------------------------------
My pictures are featured on the front page of the newly redesigned
The state Gov. of California website. Have a look! It is Flash with my pics cut into layers for a 3-d slideshow. If you are into building apps, the State has opened up lots of data to the public, so check it out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Earth
earth.google.com/
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
www.californiacoastline.org/
.
.
Tags: landscape seascape ocean beach sea wave vog sky cloud hapuna kohala big island hawaii BRAVO usa sand reflection volcano mauna loa kea kilauea sunset wallpaper PhotoContest-TNC11 united states
© All Rights Reserved
The 50 miles (80km) between San Francisco and San Jose California is known as Silicon Valley, the world's center of high technology, but San Francisco is becoming 'Silicon City', as I'll describe below. This is the Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge is to the right of this view. No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/420449750...
---------------------------------------------------------
Settings etc.:
---------------------------------------------------------
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @24
1-minute exposure @F18 (pushing it but it looks fine at full-res)
1-LEE soft ND grad 0.9 (100x150mm) (2 grads with bright lights creates reflected lights)
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 50
Small Slik tripod with Manfrotto pistol grip ball head
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
Sturdy hiking boots to keep from falling off the hill
(This is to the left of most shots taken here to get the full 2x3 ratio frame!)
I was literally hanging off the cliff to get this perspective.
It is amazing how many high technology companies are located in Silicon Valley.
Apple, NetFlix, Quora, Cisco and Juniper (the backbone of the internet), Google, YouTube, Facebook, Adobe (Photoshop, PDF files), Intuit, Tango, LSI Logic, Symantic, Nvidia, Hewlet Packard, eBay, PayPal, Yahoo, Palm, Intel (in almost every computer), AMD and Applied Materials (the rest of the chips inside nearly all computers), turntable.fm (crack for the head) vmWare (virtual servers), Appcelerator (a great app dev. framework), Y-Combinator (The birthplace of numerous startups), Mozilla (Firefox browesr), Pandora (Internet radio in Oakland), Sun Microsystems, SmugMug photo website hosting and sharing, LinkedIn (the biggest corporate social networking site),Oracle (#1 database company), monster.com, Bloom Energy, Tesla Motors, Genentech, and many more.
But San Francisco is home to hundreds of high-tech startups and and better known companies such as Flickr, Twitter, SalesForce (cloud computing) Wikimedia (wikipedia), Zynga (80 million users play farmville etc.), UStream, Metacafe, DropBox, RapLeaf, Blurb (photo books), Dolby Labs, Stumbleupon, Digg (THE way to go viral on the internet until Reddit (Also in SF) came along), Craigslist (the biggest want-ad website with local versions around the world), Yelp (recommendations on restaurants and other things, soon worldwide), Autodesk, (the leading computer design software company), Typekit, QuantCast (Web analytics), Twilio, Square(mobile payments), GitHub, Riverbed,Heroku (cloud computing/online customer database systems), Second-life (the biggest online virtual reality game played by over 800,000 people around the world). And let's not forget Wired Magazine....etc...etc..
Genentech, Lucasfilm and Pixar are also within a few miles of where I took this shot.
There is an energetic feel to this place that is hard to describe, but perhaps a view from this spot is the best way to show it in a photograph.
Okay, this really is the last upload of the year. So I hope you have a great holiday season. I have some nice seascapes from my Big Sur summit meetup with Ivan Makarov to start off the new year.
The map shows exactly where this is. It is another place not for the faint of heart!
See my Flickr profile for a link to my newly designed website.
Resources:
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
.
Tags: landscape seascape san francisco city by the bay silicon valley bay bridge coit tower transamerica pyramid Bank of America Building travel vacation bay sky skyscraper city skyscraper city california usa apple cisco juniper google sun microsystems hewlett packard HP facebook twitter palm ebay paypal yahoo intel amd oracle vmware wired magazine flickr linkedin blurb heroku salesforce riverbed second life autodesk craigs list yelp canon 5d mkii 5dmkii smugmug
© All Rights Reserved
Greetings Stumblers! Ahalanui, on the Puna coast of the Big Island of Hawaii is home to an incredible volcanically heated hot pool with water that is nearly body temperature. It also has some excellent coastal scenery and large breaking waves. Sunrise is the best time to see the drama at its best! No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/488896374...
---------------------------------------------------------
Settings etc.:
---------------------------------------------------------
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @25
1/6-second exposure @F10
LEE soft ND grad (100x150mm - 4x6in) 0.9 + 0.9
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 100
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
Small Slik Sprint mini II tripod
Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol-grip ball head
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Story
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It seemed like it would be an easy sunrise to shoot. Merely go around the hot pool, over the top of the rock wall blocking the ocean, and around to the cliffs and lava pools. However, the rocks are extremely slippery and you don't expect that when all of the lava is just a few decades old at most and very sharp. So, you walk along experiencing a reliable grippy surface and suddenly it is as slippery as ice! So if you go here, especially in the dark before sunrise, be careful!
The problem gets worse because I wanted to get close to the little reflecting pools in the foreground, but it was difficult to even move, let alone run from these unobstructed waves which pound this spot every 20 seconds or so.
The weather was warm and about as perfect as it can get, and this can lull you into a false sense of security. I mean, how can there be danger in such a paradise? Well, with no coral reef in front of many Hawaian beaches, it seems like every 4th wave is a sleeper wave, so be careful photographing any non-reef beach. Seriously!
Anyway, even if you do not make it to the beach during the day (the hot-pool lifeguard has a bullhorn to keep people away from the waves), definitely visit this hot pool. It has an opening for the 78 degree (28c) ocean water to mix with the 94 degree (34c) hot pool water. Suddenly, the oean water feels as cold as California! The breeze off the ocean is cool enough so that you can relax in the hot water without getting too hot. It is perfect!
Check it out.
www.hawaiiweb.com/hawaii/html/beaches/ahalanui_park.html
The map shows the exact location.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Other stuff
---------------------------------------------------------------------
My pictures are featured on the front page of the newly redesigned
The state Gov. of California website. Have a look! It is Flash with my pics cut into layers for a 3-d slideshow. If you are into building apps, the State has opened up lots of data to the public, so check it out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Earth
earth.google.com/
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
www.californiacoastline.org/
.
.
Tags: landscape seascape wave sunrise water ocean sea lava light hawaii ahalanui puna big island Pu'ala'a reflection tidepool PhotoContest-TNC11 united states usa
© All Rights Reserved
(eerie music playing..)
Could these 'coccoons' have been left by extraterrestrials planning the domination of our planet?
Read 'the story' below to discover the truth! No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/466877725...
Also, my pictures are featured on the front page of the newly redesigned
The state Gov. of California website. Have a look! It is Flash with my pics cut into layers for a 3-d slideshow. If you are into building apps, the State has opened up lots of data to the public, so check it out!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Settings etc.:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @19
5-second exposure @F14
LEE soft ND grad (100x150mm - 4x6in) 0.9
+ Singh-ray reverse soft edge grad 0.9
(I'm not sure about the singh-ray filter. I had to desaturate the blue channel in the sky
to make it look natural. The sky looked too blue in the camera compared to my eye.
Also, the edge of the grad is too hard, despite it being called a soft grad.)
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 50
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Story
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, well actually these 2-3 ft tall (1m) rounded rocks were embedded in sandstone layers. Then, as the soft layers eroded, the harder sections separated and were eroded by the sea into these round shapes. Some were round even while embedded in the sandstone layer, so they must have been formed and then were locked up in the layers and released in place in more recent times. So they have been eroded twice at least! I could not find out how they originally became round.
Here is a good explanation showing some of these rocks still embedded in the sandstone layers. There is even a video in there.
www.gem-n-i.org/news/oct08.php
This is a -1.0 ft low tide, and I used the reflective water as best I could. A medium tide (+2/+3 ft (1m) is best here for showing the water moving through the many dozens of round rocks. It is called 'Bowling Ball Beach' but these are far too big to be rolled around by hand. Actually the smallest round rock is the size of a bowling ball. See the notes above.
There was a perfect medium tide at sunset on the three nights I was here, but not a cloud was in the sky. So I came out at sunrise when there were a few clouds. They were gone an hour later, so I lucked out!
These are similar to the Moeraki Builders of New Zealand, but there are more of them here and they are more densly packed. And they look just as good!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeraki_Boulders
The map shows exactly where this is. It is an easy 1/2 mile hike from a small turnout just north of Schooner Gulch. Once you get to the cliff, there is a path with wood boards tied together with steel cable. The hill has eroded under the last part of the 'stairs', so you have to climb down, almost like on a very shaky ladder!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Other stuff
---------------------------------------------------------------------
See my Flickr profile for a link to
my newly designed website.
My landscape photography e-book is up to 310 pages and is ready for a final edit. then I'll write my newsletter again. (The book is about how to learn landscape photography from the old masters of painting.) It is in pdf format, but the conversion to ePub (iPad) is looking good too.
Go to my Flickr profile for small group workshop information and to sign up for my free monthly newsletter. In the newsletter, I will answer questions and talk about theories and techniques. No spam will be sent!
Follow me on Twitter!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Earth
earth.google.com/
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
www.californiacoastline.org/
.
.
Tags: ocean sea sunrise sunset sand beach rock sky wave seascape landscape bowling ball beach mendocino california point arena Moeraki travel vacation nature erosion usa canon 5d mkII sandstone Schooners gulch PhotoContest-TNC11
© All Rights Reserved
Sometimes everything seems to come together for a brief moment. A lot of it is pure luck I say! No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the 1200 pixel version!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/444600323...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Settings etc.:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L @17.5 (I never go wide all the way!)
1/5-second exposure @F14
LEE soft ND grad (100x150mm) 0.9 + 0.75 (5 1/2 stops total)
Lee foundation kit filter holder with Lee 77mm adapter ring
No polarizer.
ISO 50
Small Slik tripod with Manfrotto pistol grip ball head
RAW file processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF file processed with Photoshop
Bare feet, no way to keep dry if you wish to get close!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Story
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, much of this is the result of good old-fashoned luck. True, I did plan to come here because It was raining and it looked like the storm would clear out (moving to the left) just as the sun set. And I did know that the waves would be of a decent size. I also knew that the tide would be high and that this time of the year is when light strikes the monolith rock at a slight angle just as the sun sets.
However, I did not know that the pattern in the clouds would line up with the briefly appearing retreating lines of foam. I did not know that the waves on the right would momentarily appear in front of the newly opened red colored gap in the clouds. And I did not anticipate that the retreating dark grey clouds moving off to the left would provide some color contrast compared to the otherwise colorful scene.
When you add up all of the randomly appearing elements in this photo, they count for at least half of the total surface area in the frame. I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how much you plan and think about what you hope to witness, nature is so random that you will always be surprized! And that is half the fun, don't you think?
Here is a group I formed for the workshop that was held the next day.
www.flickr.com/groups/patricksmithworkshops/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Earth
earth.google.com/
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
www.californiacoastline.org/
The map shows exactly where this is. It is an easy hike from the parking lot.
See my Flickr profile for a link to my newly designed website.
.
Tags: mcclures landscape seascape point reyes national seashore kehoe monolith ocean wind storm wave surf california marin sand cloud canon 5d MKII canon 5d 17-40L nature foam tide sky vanishing point usa travel mkii 5dmkii PhotoContest-TNC11
© All Rights Reserved
