Dockweiler Sunset

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’ll drive out to the beach and the clouds just grey everything out.

The structure you see in the shot is actually 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 all last summer about a half a mile down from this spot and that would be disgusting.

About two miles south of this location is a place called “Shit Pipes.” In that case those pipes are treated sewage from the Hyperion water treatment plant. I’m assuming they dump far enough out to not make the water hazardous for swimmers.

Dockweiler Sunset – Fujifilm XT1

The sunset was creating some really 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 fast enough shutter to freeze the water.

I shot RAW+JPEG. I started editing just the JPEG but I did a lot of work to 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