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Beach Photos

64 posts

RNI Film Presets At The Beach

I recently picked up the RNI All Films V3.0 Lightroom presets by Really Nice Images and wanted to try them out on some beach photos I took last weekend down in Huntington.

I’ll be posting more photos with these throughout the next few weeks but my first impressions are pretty good. Usually I think most presets are garbage or too Instagramy, but these are actually a pretty high quality product. They allow you to quickly cycle through different film stocks by different brands with different types of film which you can see on my images shot here with the Fuji X100T.

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First Photo Processed With Iridient 3 And It Is Sharp!

Huntington Beach Pier Sunset

This is my first photo to be processed with Iridient Developer 3. I finally bit the bullet and bought it after playing with the beta for the last few months.

There are a lot of different things this software does that I’m still getting use to and I really want to have it figured out before going into detail with a full review and guide. So far with my first impressions I’m seeing some great potential that we just cannot get from Lightroom.

The question I will be looking to answer is if the pros outweigh the cons. I think they might because the sharpness and detail I get out of these Fuji X RAW files are unlike anything I’ve seen before. It honestly feel as though these 16MP files are giving me the detail of a 22megapixel camera when using Iridient. Maybe more. And that’s a pretty significant improvement to image quality especially when printing large.

See shot details. . .

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Fire In The Sky

Landscape photo at Dockweiler State Beach

On my first day with the new Tamron 15-30mm lens, I immediately headed down to the beach with hopes of shooting a sunset photo. Unfortunately, doing such a thing this time of year in Los Angeles happens to line up perfectly with rush hour traffic. Which sucks.

Luckily I managed to leave early enough to just almost make it. Actually I think I arrived just after. It was hard to tell, the sun was not in sight and everything was overcast and depressing, almost a complete bust. But then literally, only five minutes after getting situated to shoot, the sky lit up like fourteen-year-old girls bedroom. PINK!!! 

But don’t worry, I colored it slightly more orange because I’m a man and pink is for girls.

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Xmas in Venice Beach

Xmas in Venice Beach

I don't know if it's global warming or what. But the weather yesterday was amazing. The Venice Beach Pier is usually my go to spot to test out new camera gear. And I've never seen so many people here. Ever! This is also my go to surf spot. It was a zoo. Not sure if it was because of the really awesome weather which was in the 70's or the amazing sunset. Or maybe a little of both. I guess it being Christmas could have played a roll as well.

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First Print With The Sony A7r – Ventura Sun

Ventura SunA clear sunset at the Ventura Beach Pier.

My wife and I drove up the coast from Los Angeles to Ventura to do some beach scouting for shooting when the weather is a bit more interesting. We landed at the Venture Beach Pier. The sunset that day was very unique. Although we had clear skies, the sun casted this amazing orange glow over everything. It was unusual for a cloudless sunset.

Landscape Photography With The Sony A7r

I am blown away at how sharp the Sony A7r sensor is and the resolution coming off of its sensor is fantastic. I don't feel so guilty about cropping anymore. And surprisingly, this is also a single exposure. I was able to lift the shadows of the pier and get a great sun exposure in a single photo. I use to have to work so hard to get great results out of my 5Dmkii, now, it feels like i'm cheating. It will be fun to see how Canon responds to this camera. I'm seeing more and more rumors about them developing high megapixel cameras. And it's about time. Nobody builds em quite like Canon!

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The Shrine And New Presets In The Works!

In an effort to sort of restructure my life and webpage, I'll be moving a lot of my day to day posts over to SLRHQ. I'm keeping this site mainly about photos that I care about and my professional career. Which means a lot less posting and a restructured front page.

Since the last photo I did of San Clemente Life took me about 5 hours of post processing. Doing that kind of work is very time consuming and takes me about a week to complete one image with my schedule. I'll still post some fun stuff here and there from travel. My goal is still a few a week, but my daily posts about cameras, tips, rumors, will be on that site. 

So here is an old photo of mine, I applied some new presets to make look old. I've been working on this collection of Lightroom Presets that give this faded look. I've been having a ton of fun with them. I'll probably sell them over at SLRHQ soon. As soon as I recover from food poisoning and get a few days off. Which means three weeks from now. 🙂 Unless I get enough requests, then I'll sell them sooner.

I've also updated my review of the Samyang 14mm f2.8 with some added photos from Marco Herman. So go check those out.

The Shrine

I'm not 100% on the story of this, but this is a relationship shrine. Go worship it and watch your relationships blossom! It's found in southern Japan, a bit south of Fukuoka. 

The Shrine. A wonderful shrine in southern Japan. It's a shrine to celebrate relationships

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San Clemente Life

San Clemete Life. A rare and amazing sunset in San Clemente California.

A rare and beautiful sunset at the San Clemente Pier last Sunday. This photo almost didn't happen. I didn't have my tripod base plate for my camera and I was running a bit late to the beach. Luckily a parking spot pop up immediately when I got there and I ended up using my Gorilla Pod mini tripod to stabilize the camera. 

I mounted my camera to the Gorilla Pod and then wrapped that around the top of my tripod. It was ghetto and very difficult to stabilize since those things aren't all that sturdy with a 5Dmkii and a 24-70mm f2.8L lens. I ended up actually switching to my 16-35mm because it's way lighter. But in the end it all worked out. I was able to get a few different exposures that I later stitched together in Photoshop.

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Beacon at Davenport

Beacon at Davenport Beach. A beacon like rock taken during a foggy night at Davenport Beach near Santa Cruz.

While in Santa Cruz, my mission was to take some photos of the Davenport abandoned pier. But the weather was so bad and it was high tide making it impossible to get to the pier. So mission failed. But I did find this cool rock, shining through the fog like a beacon. You could barely see it from a few hundred yards away but as I got closer it made for a cool image with the solid fog background. With a little bit of contrast and sharpening I was able to create this minimalist landscape.

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Bridge Rock Of Santa Cruz

Bridge Rock of Santa Cruz California. Last weekend I drove up and stayed the night with my wife at Santa Cruz. I made the mistake of not really researching any photo spots so I kind of was just winging it. I did find this pretty cool place called Bridge Rock. At first the weather didn't seem like it was worth shooting in but I decided to anyway. I used an ND500 filter to make everything look smooth and it really turned into a unique scene.

While I was in Santa Cruz last weekend the weather was a bit on and off. There was this thick cloud of fog that came in afternoon so you really only had a few hours in the morning to get any decent photos that weren't foggy. 

The main shot I wanted in Santa Cruz was of the Davon Port pier, but I didn't time the tide right so it didn't happen the day I was there. I did stop at a few other little spots to see if there was any potential in a good photo. 

This was one of the spots. Bridge Rock. At first I wasn't going to shoot here since the weather was bad and there were a lot of people, but I decided to just shoot a few minutes to see what happened. I used my ND500 filter to create that smooth look and It actually turned out pretty cool. The sun was blocked by the clouds so there was this nice even light on everything making for some really nice vibrant colors. 

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