Tag: Santa Monica | Alik Griffin

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Are Helios 58mm f2 Lenses Good?

The Helios lenses have really grown in popularity over the last few years for their classic rendering and crazy swirling bokeh. But are they really any good? With all the awesome new third-party lenses out of China or Japan, the Helios lenses no longer get as much attention as they used to, but they're still fun lenses to shoot with if you can get a good copy.

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Exploring Santa Monica Pier | X100F

This weekend my little two-year old daughter and I walked down to the train station for an evening down at the Santa Monica Pier. I've lived in Los Angeles for over 10 years now and this was my first time using public transportation. A very proud moment for me.

HDR with the Fujifilm X-Pro 2

I come to the Santa Monica Pier a few times a year to test cameras and lenses or to just update my portfolio. Even though I only live a few miles away, it's a huge pain in the ass dealing with the crowds and parking. At least this time it ended up being a rewarding experience.

Tongva Park Santa Monica California

Tongva Park – Sony A7r II

I've passed through the Tongva park a few times while on my way to shoot the Santa Monica Pier, but never actually shot here. I would always see these lookout structures and thought they might be cool to shoot through. So a few nights ago, I finally made an attempt to come here but unfortunately, I couldn't find parking because of some event which caused me to miss the sunset. So it is in Los Angeles. You just have to add on an hour anything you want to do around here.

HDR with Lightroom Santa Monica

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Update

How HDR Works In The New Lightroom

With the release of the new Lightroom CC 2015 or Lightroom 6, we can merge our HDRs by photo without leaving the software. The technique used is slightly different than…

Santa Monica Pier Nights

Santa Monica Nights – Behind The Shot

Some sunsets or scenes are so amazing that they don’t need much post-processing. I’ve spent days on some shots, and minutes on others. This shot was quick and easy to process, and I’ll show you the tools I used. I have different techniques for processing my images, depending on the quality of the shot and how I feel.

Sunset at Pacific Park

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Sunset At Pacific Park

It's not every day we get one of these sunsets in Santa Monica. I've shot the Santa Monica Pier many a time but have never seen anything like this before. I've actually never seen anything like this before in the many years I've been shooting beach photos in Southern California. Only when I lived in Del Mar surfing as a youth I would occasionally catch something like this. But that was before I was really into photography.

Orange Skies of Santa Monica

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Orange Skies – Santa Monica Pier

This photo is of the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier Amusement Park. I love sunsets when there are no clouds in the sky. You get nice even colors that are easy to tweak. Shot with the Canon 5Dmkii and the 24-70mm f2.8L USM lens. I tweaked the exposure in Lightroom. Created a silhouette and shifted the sky to be more orange than it already was. A very simple composition and color edit leaning into what was already there.

Santa Monica Pier HDR

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Santa Monica Pier – HDR

This was my first time shooting the Santa Monica Pier on my Canon 5Dmkii. It's a very popular spot for photographers but it's rare to get the timing of the lights right. If you plan on going here to shoot the amusement park on the pier, the best time I've found is to shoot after the sun goes down. Unless of course there is an amazing sunset happening which only occurs a few times a year in Los Angeles. Most of the time it looks like this.

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