Jalama Beach

LA large 

So, after getting the cap I loaded the truck and headed west. Took 2 days but I finally hit LA on the 14th. Immediately drove to Griffith Park to visit the famous observatory where Edwin Hubble did all his historic research. It's an amazing place with amazing views. From the building's roof you can see all of LA spread out in the valley. You see downtown, the Hollywood hills and all the way to the ocean. It's awe inspiring. But not many images came out of my many days there as I was focused on something else. I did take an HDR panorama of the Hollywood Hills but it's not on my laptop right now so I'll have to pass. I promise I'll throw it up in a few days although it's not all that exciting. You'll see what I mean when it's published.

Anyway, I spent 3 days in town and a few at a rest area north of town. LA tends to overwhelm you even if you're familiar with large cities. It is huge. You get on a freeway and drive and drive and drive ... and drive some more getting from one place to another. It takes an hour at the least. I spent several days at Griffith Observatory and an early morning and evening at Santa Monica beach getting lots of frames for a time lapse video I'm thinking about. Didn't get all the stuff I wanted as I just burned out too quickly. It will have to wait for my next visit to finish. On the 18th I finally admitted defeat and headed north on I5 toward the coast. My first stop ...

Jalama Beach...

Drive north of Ventura and the first major city you hit is Lompoc. Just south of there you see a sign on rt. 1 directing you to Jalama Beach. The state runs the place and they do a nice job but charge a lot for the privilege. Just to get through the gate costs $10 and if you want to stay add $28 to that. I decided I wanted to see the beach but could find cheaper accommodations elsewhere. I spent the afternoon walking the beach and sleeping in my truck. Around 7 I headed out to the beach with my gear and set up near the waterline to photograph a large group of rocks in the water as the sun sank into the horizon. I knew it would be a race between sunset and the rising tide but figured I might just make it. Damn did time slow to a crawl. Kept looking at my watch and then the advancing tide and back to the watch ... it was going to be close. Finally the big show started and I kept hitting that shutter button and banging out 5 sequence HDR sets like crazy. With waves lapping at my tripod's legs I finally relented and went back to the truck. Pulled out of the park around 8:30 and headed back to Lompoc. Wasn't much available for sleeping so grabbed a quick dinner at McD before parking on a side street and sleeping vertical. Not the best sleep but sometimes you have to make compromises for your art.

Jalama Beach Sunset - 85mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

This is a 5 image set for HDR. All the usual steps were used to get the final result. Now, I do have to claim hardship here ... because of the lousy accommodations (sleeping on streets sometimes) and lack of suitable work spaces in California rest areas it took me 4 days to find a place where I could finally get images into my computer and edit them. This image was created on a picnic table under the trees in Morro Bay state park. That's not the best place to be color grading images. You get reflections on the screen and the background isn't really very conducive to creating a quality image. So bear with me ... when I get back to Crimea later this summer I'll redo all these images and make them perfect ... I promise.