Last night’s sunset near Dockweiler State Beach here in Los Angeles. We’ve been having some interesting weather lately, which means some nice sunsets. But it can be hit and miss. Sometimes, I drive to the beach, and the clouds grey everything out.
The structure in the shot is a pipe dumping who knows what into the ocean. It smelled pretty bad near here, so I hope it’s just runoff and not sewage. I was surfing about half a mile down from this spot last summer, which would be disgusting.
About two miles south of this location is a place called “Shit Pipes.” In that case, those pipes are treated as sewage from the Hyperion water treatment plant. I assume they dump far enough not to make the water hazardous for swimmers.
The sunset created some nice reflections off the water, so I wanted to get as much of it in the shot as possible. To do this, I shot handheld. I had to go to ISO 400 at f5.6 to get a shutter that was fast enough to freeze the water.
I shot RAW+JPEG. I started editing just the JPEG, but I did a lot of work on this shot in post with Color Efex Pro, and the image started to fall apart. So, I had to go back and redo it all with the RAW.
JPEG is usually fine if you don’t push saturation and contrast too much. I also added a bit of a glowing effect and sunset enhancements with Photoshop.
Location: Dockweiler Beach, Playa Del Rey CA
Camera: Fujifilm XT1
Lens: Voigtlander 15mm
ISO 400, F5.6, 1/150sec
