Through a friend at work I got hooked up with another friend at work who's really into photography. I thought I was into photography but Willie is *really* into it, and I might be a little jealous. He's the guy who figures out the best light, the best time of day, the best day, and does all the calculations to figure out where to be and when. I went to Yosemite with him last month to shoot Horsetail Falls and I was able to make it over to Half Moon Bay with him to shoot sunset at Gray Whale Cove on Friday. The photoshoot almost got cancelled because of the (sad) earthquake in Japan. The tsunami hit California in the morning and most of the beaches were closed but by sunset we were able to hit the coast and catch some big waves. I arrived at Gray Whale Cove and Willie was already setup with his super wide lens for the perfect photo. His shot (see Flickr) came out great, but mine, with my less wide lens, is what it is. I'm not too happy with it and I had to do some fancy post-processing to get this to work but the final product isn't too bad. This is a blend of 2 photos (not an HDR): I took an under-exposed photo to get the sunset, and took a normal photo to get the water motion. Willie really taught me how useful it is to have a good set of filters (graduated filters) with a filter holder. Time to go spend some of that good hard earned cash (hey, maybe I'll win the lottery and buy some gear and donate the rest to charity?).
After taking the photos by the rock at sunset I decided I wanted to try a different spot with water going over the rocks. You couldn't really see much of the colorful sunset, since there wasn't much color in the sky, but I did take a couple photos and turned this HDR (I hate doing HDR's these days but this photo needed it … to get the sky and the movement in the water). I liked the finished product.
This one is kinda boring since you can't see the sunset at all, but i liked the movement in the water. See the next photo for the zoomed in water movement/water-falls.