This is an HDR beach photo of a sunset at Laguna Beach. I tried to create this photo with only one exposure but just couldn't keep the sky from getting overexposed. So I used HDR, which means High Dynamic Range. It's basically taking three or more separate photos at different exposures. One exposing for the shadows, one for the mids and the last for the highlights. You then take all three of those photos and combine them into one where everything is exposed, or in the case of this photo, everything is usable. I still like my shadows to be dark in my compositions so I kept them black.

This picture is actually made up of two separate HDR photos to get the waves doing what I wanted. One thing about beach photography is you have to have a lot of patience. It's the only type of photography where I'll sit there and continue to take shots over and over and over until I get the perfect one where the waves and water are just right. Or at least doing something interesting.

In this photo I took the foreground water from one shot, and the splashing wave in the background from another. It's actually a bit more complicated than that because I had to mask the shots prior to combining them into a single HDR photo. So I masked out the best part from one of the bracketed photos in each HDR sequence creating two separate HDR photos. Then I created a simple layer mask in Photoshop to blend them and did my final color back in Lightroom 4.2. Which now runs snappier than ever. I'm very happy Adobe updated it and got all the annoying bugs out of it that was causing it to run painfully slow. Thank you Adobe for listening to us. 

This is an HDR photo of two seagulls relaxing during the sunset in a sea of mussels. It was a very low tied so the mussels were all exposed. I'm sure the seagulls were looking for an easy meal with all the other animals that were exposed. I'm on a 16mm shot in this photo and I was suprised how close these birds were letting me get to them. I'm a lot closer than it appears here. I guess the birds on the coasts of California are more use to people.

This photo was a 5 shot HDR. I took the best shot of the seagulls and masked them out then colored it to my likings in Lightroom4.

In the foreground you'll notice all these mussels exposed from the low tide. Off in the distance to the right there is a mysterious man wading in the water. Probably not the best thing to be doing in this kind of reef. There were sea anemone, mussels, and barnacles just about everywhere. Not sure how he did that without tearing apart his feet. Unless he found the sweet spot. I might just have to paint him out later, but for now, I kind of like him there. Should be easy enough to do since I have a few different takes of this same scene where he was standing in a different spot. That's the only bad part about taking photos in California. There is a lot of awesome stuff here, but there is always someone standing in the shot. I need to start carrying my BB gun. Poping this guy from 50 yard, he would have know idea what hit him. . . I'm kidding of course. 

This picture of the ocean reminds me of growing up. I use to go skim boarding at Laguna Beach with my cousins. Brook street to be exact. It's not really a good place to surf since all the waves break on the shore and there is reef everywhere. But the fine sand and shore break makes for some great skim boarding. 

This is an HDR photo taken with three shots at a two stop difference. Photo Editing was done in Photomatix and Lightroom 4.

This is an HDR photograph of the cliffs at Victoria beach in Laguna Beach. This tower is probably around 80 years old and still stands despite the forces of nature constantly pounding on it. I would have thought the cliffs would have eroded away and taken the towers with it after 80 years. When I first saw pictures of this tower I always imagined it was huge. Then as I arrived at Victoria Beach to take photos it was actually very small. Only about two to three stories high. Doesn't look that way in the photo though.

I really like the texture of the cliff. Especially with the micro contrast pulled out with the HDR process with Photomatix. It's not the prettiest looking thing but definitely not something you see everyday. 

This Photo is of the Victoria Beach Tower which is actually a 60 foot spiral staircase built with reinforced concrete that leads up to a house on the top of the cliff. This was built in 1926 as part of California Senator William Edward Brown and his wife's summer vacation home so they could escape the heat of Beverly Hills. Must be nice. I guess 85 degrees in the summer was too much for them to handle back then. The look of this tower comes from old French Chateaux and Castles. Many people returning from the First World War were inspired by these structures and attempted to mimic them. 

This photo is a 3 shot HDR just after sunset. I did about a million things to polish up this photo to be printable. A bunch of masking in Photomatix and more in Photoshop. I used the Canon 16-35mm f2.8L II lens for the versatility and its weather sealing. I tend to get wet a lot when shooting Beach Photography so I'm often afraid to pull out my other non sealed lenses like the Samyang 14mm f2.8 which optically is a better lens.