The Lost Coast - Numero Cinco

This was an experiment I did with averaging out the wave crashes during the daytime, by adding multiple pictures together. However, somewhere I got side tracked by how cool the differencing looked, played with some masks and came up with this. I like it, but it's not quite there yet.



Bri and I climbed up to the top of the ridge separating our campsite from the ocean to get some last minute shots before the sun went down. The fog cleared a bit and we got some descent shots. Bri got a really nice one with the waves washing up on the beach. This was an HDR picture where the sun was catching some clouds on the other side of the fog, and if you look in the upper left you can see the crescent moon.




Here is what happens when you take 3 HDR images (so 9 images in total) with long exposures, and do a difference on them.

The Lost Coast - Numero Quatro

WHEW!

Finally, I can post what I've been working on all night. This is a 9 image panorama. I think it turned out pretty good, you can definitely see the seams, but the conditions were changing rapidly, and I haven't bought a remote yet so I had to wait 10s for the timer each time. I worked through all those other pics just so I could get this up tonight- I'm sick.

The Lost Coast - Numero Tres

These are sorta random pics. The first two are from the hike. We got above the fog which was cool, but hard to capture. This idea was from Brian, good call. We did a sweet stop animation which I can't wait to see. The last three were from the previous day, that seal got really close and was definitely checking us out, I finally got my bee wings picture, and the rocks on this beach were really cool flat pebbles.

The Lost Coast - Numero Dos

Second day, we awoke to see a herd of elk cruising through the area. They were headed out to the coast during the morning low tide to munch on some algae or kelp, or whatever they eat. We then went for a hike and had to pass through the herd, luckily they weren't being aggressive and left us alone. We were really close though and it was more than a bit scary I have to say.

The Lost Coast - Numero Uno

Brian, Louisa, Sara, Liza and I went up to The Lost Coast, a stretch of the California coast where the 1 deviates from the coast for a section. The proper name is the Sinkyone Wilderness. It was an amazing campsite, top two spots are between Desolation Wilderness and this site. The parking lot was 0.4 mi from the campsite, so it was sorta a hybrid between backpacking and car camping. It was very easy access, and we were practically on the beach. The first day Bri and I got up early to take some pictures, we had some breakfast, paid the ranger, and got some water. We thought there wasn't any potable water, but there was at the ranger station (the girls found this out later). Luckily Henry, this nice guy there with his family, had a purifier that he let us borrow. Finally, as it was a day to celebrate we got drunk.

Splash!

So I got seawater on my camera TWICE during this photoshoot. The sacrifices we make in the name of art! The one good thing was the last picture in this entire set, I got it by taking a wave in the face. Luckily my camera is fine, I gave it a nice wipe down when I got home, and I got this pretty amazing picture!

Tide Pools 2

Tide Pools 1

I got off work early and came home before Sara left for her friend's place. We were going to walk down to Natural Bridges, but we came across a set of stairs that were just too inviting. There are tide pools in Santa Cruz! I mean duh, but no one seems to know they're there. I got a bunch of really good pictures, I'm not even sure which ones to post, so I'll do my best!

A Few Tilt-Shift Attempts

Ok, going back through my pictures I see that I definatly tend towards the nature/pano pictures. Not enough city pictures to make miniatures. However, I took some things that I find interesting with a blur addition. Mostly just practice...

Tilt-Shift Faking

I learned something new today. It is called Tilt-Shift (TS) photography. Here is what a TS lens looks like, pretty crazy stuff. The problem is that these lenses cost upwards of $1000, which makes me sad because the make really neat pictures. You can use it to remove perspective distortion (how buildings have angled lines that intersect at infinity), you can make a really trippy miniature model look(Link), and you can accent different parts of the picture, by 'pushing' the eye away from the parts of the picture you want them to ignore (people don't like looking at blurry stuff). So, back to the $1000 problem- I'm not going to spend that much on a specialty lens like this, no way- in comes digital post-processing. This Flickr discussion tells you how to reproduce this effect using the Gimp (Photoshop can be used as well, but again, not spending $500 for software). I unfortunately don't have many people in the city type of pictures to try the miniature effect out, but here is a side by side comparison of the Adonis picture from earlier this year.