In October I had the chance to work remotely from Santa Cruz, California. Since I've never been to the States, I jumped at the chance. The company I work for (Vaadin, in case you are interested), decided to treat us and rented the Outsite Santa Cruz office for two weeks (link). The property is literally 2 blocks away from the beach, providing great views of the coastline, and some of the best surf beaches in the States. I'm not much for sports, but I decided to join the trip anyway. There was a lot more than surfing awaiting us.
A few minutes from the office. You can see my colleagues in the top left, taking in the view.
Same spot, different view.
Rather than showing all the 300+ images I have of the trip, I thought I'd show you some of the best pics, and tell you a little about each one instead. There will still be quite a few, so I decided to split the post into two parts. This one covers the first week, with shots from Santa Cruz itself and an air show in San Francisco.
During the first night I noticed that there wasn't that much light pollution at all. The stars shone bright, with some small clouds going by. I took my tripod down to the beach, and took the following shot. The spot is the same as in the pics above, but instead of the coastline (that had a lot of disturbing lights) I decided to angle the camera southward, over the bay. Timing the shot with the waves along with the long exposure (20 seconds) gave me a fluffy, foamy look of the waves. You can also see the haze that was an almost constant presence on the coast. The road lights light up the haze, worsening the light pollution in some directions.
Looking over Monterey Bay.
The first weekend (we stayed for two) some of us also took a trip up to San Francisco for an air show and quick look around. We drove up along the coast, which in parts is breathtaking (more pics on that in the next post) but the haze was there again, foiling my plans. Also, since we were 6 guys in the car, making everyone wait for my picture taking wouldn't have been cool :) I snapped a few pics from the moving car, most of them boring. I did get one good-ish one. I like the simplicity and the negative space:
Along Highway 1.
The haze cleared when we got to SF. Well, when I say cleared, I mean that for some reason it stopped at the coast, leaving the harbor with clear skies.
Some nerds and a very foggy Golden Gate.
We got down to the harbor a bit before the air show, so I had time to scout a location. I found a pier that took me quite a bit out from the shore, and set up my camera. I had my 300mm lens with me, and good thing too; even with the 1.5x crop on my camera, it was barely enough to get close-up shots of the planes. As for aperture, shutter and ISO; it depends on what type of plane you are shooting. If it is a propeller plane, you want a slow shutter speed to get some movement in the props. If it's a jet, there are no moving parts, so you can crank up the shutter as much as you want. I was in aperture priority the whole time, setting my ISO so that with f5.6 I had a shutter speed for jets (around 1/2000s), and at f16 it was slow enough for prop planes (1/150s). That way I could quickly adjust the aperture according to the plane type, and not worry about other settings.
Start of the show, the USAF had a few parajumpers ready to jump..
Very American, no?
The smoke trail helps visualize the tricks the pilots do; without it, there isn't much context. With jets, the trails are so wide that you wouldn't see the planes themselves, but it works fine with the slower prop planes.
The Patriots jet team, sporting appropriate colors.
The stars of the show; the US Navy Blue Angels. Look at the distance between the planes, crazy!
Closest shot I got of the Blue Angels jets. I would have preferred a longer lens, something like 5-600mm, but you work with what you have.
I also got a shot of the cutest trio of seals in the SF harbor:
Synchronized snoozing.
We didn't really have time to wander around SF properly, so no shots of that unfortunately. Back in Santa Cruz the next day, I got a tip that there was a Monarch sanctuary a short walk away from the office. As I walked to the sanctuary along the beach, I took some shots of the surfers out in the water. My trick to catching surfers in action is taking a LOT of shots. I just put my camera in full speed mode, and took 10-15 frames each time a surfer did something interesting. Then I deleted 99% of the shots, and kept the ones with peak action. Some would say that you need to predict the action, and just take the single shot when it happens. Sure, if you have all the time in the world, and years of experience, and know the shutter lag of your camera, that's an option. My way is a lot easier, though ;)
Surfer cresting a wave; make sure you have a fast enough shutter speed (1/1000s is a good starting point).
The butterflies were a bit shy at first. There are a lot of them, but they prefer to sit in trees out of your reach. They also get spooked easily, so big crowds, noise and fast movements are to be avoided. I looked around to find a good branch to take a pic of with enough butterflies, close by, and in sunlight. It took a while, but I found this one:
Monarch butterflies resting in a tree. I waited until the butterfly in the middle opened its wings fully to get the brighter colors on the top. Pre-focusing using back-button focus really helped here.
I also tried to get a shot of a butterfly in motion. This is much more difficult than it sounds, especially if you want to get close. The butterflies are very fast, and they don't move in straight lines. After 10 minutes of trying to get the autofocus to track them, I gave up and switched to manual focusing. I found an area where they flew regularly, and pre-focused in the middle of it. Then it was a question of tracking each butterfly, just shooting hundreds of frames and hoping one of them would have the butterfly sharp. Finally I got the lucky shot:
Monarch in flight, one among of hundreds of fuzzy ones.
Since I had all my gear with me, I decided to stay for sunset. The beach was oriented west to east, making it a good place to take sunset photos. I walked around the area, trying to find good vantage points before setting up. With sunsets, it helps if you find a composition before the actual sunset, and set up. Then you don't need to run around and scramble for the shot during the short time the sun is actually setting. I decided on a composition looking back along the beach, eastward, and set up my tripod. I also put on a polarizer and 3-stop ND filter, to get some motion in the water.
Sunset over Natural Bridges State Beach.
After getting my shot, I looked around again to see if there was another shot to be had. I only needed to turn around toward the sun to see this:
My favorite from the day. I shifted the color towards red-gold and emphasized the sun rays in post, to add to the atmosphere.
That just goes to show that the best laid plans are not always the best ones. Even if you decide on a shot, take a look around after you get it; you might find something else. I started to walk back towards the office with the sun barely over the horizon, and took one last pic along the beach.
Pelicans chilling on the rock formations. I got lucky with the single bird toward the sun :)
Not a bad evening, all in all. It's rare I get this many keepers during a single day. Very pleased, I headed back home to process the images. This is also a good place to split the posts from the trip, I think.
The next post covers the second week of the trip, with more pics from Highway 1, the Monterey Aquarium, and Big Basin Redwood State Park.