Point Cabrillo

Hurricane Irma

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, always talking about hurricanes, but they are the number one topic right now. Irma is within hours of pounding into south Florida and I have every reason to expect this will be another disaster. Florida has been ignoring the threat for a long time, building big hotels and resorts right on the beach and draining the Everglades in the stupid belief that they will never be needed to stand sentinel against a big storm. Well, now they are about to pay big time. It will be truly interesting to see how much of south Florida is left next week. Of course, the pundits, who have little skin in the game, are convinced that this is just another storm like all that came before it. Rush Limbaugh, the mouth who can't stop "entertaining" his followers with one bucket of bullsh*t after another, announced that this hurricane was all a liberal fantasy, not real in any form, and then, like the coward he is, ran from his Florida home to somewhere safe while those who listen to his bile are stuck there to ride out the monster. If ever there was a case for muzzling someone, this clown is a prime candidate. People are going to die because of his lies and I think it's time for him to pay up. What do you say .... Rush? Willing to put your money where your mouth is?

As always, my heart and thoughts go to those who are being hurt by this storm. And I hope some of our lying politicians are watching this disaster unfold with a new awareness that our country and others need to start taking climate change and these monsters seriously. Maybe it's a good idea to abandon much of the low lying parts of Florida ... to let it return to the barrier reef state it had in the "good old days". Maybe we should reconstitute the Everglades too while we are at it. This storm gives us the opportunity to rethink our development practices and to not throw good money after bad in some stupid attempt to regain our foothold on the beach.

Point Cabrillo, CA

Point Cabrillo light is a few miles north of Mendocino on California's north coast. It's now a museum but still functioning as a lighthouse. The association that keeps it running is sanctioned by the Coast Guard to maintain the light in first class condition and they do an amazing job. I spent an hour talking with the keeper on site and he filled my head with all kinds of neat information. I took lots of pictures of the light and will, sometime in the future, put one or more here for your enjoyment.

This image is of the rocks near the light and it shows why the light is there. I wanted to really show how it must have looked to an earlier mariner, trying to feel his way up the coast in a storm and at dusk and what he must have seen. Those rocks and the crashing waves gave me the willies and I was on solid ground at the time. Imagine what it must have felt like looking through an old telescope as your boat pitched and yawed beneath you. Crazy or insanely brave they must have been.

Anyway, I took this image at f/22 so the exposure would be long enough to show the breaking waves as a mist. In this case the view is very ominous, as the dark rocks thrust up through the surf. The noise was deafening. Put yourself in that mariner's shoes and feel the pounding water and the salt spray. Makes you feel a bit queasy, doesn't it? A picture can do that sometimes. That's the power of an image. Grab hold of the rail ... it's going to get very rough out here.

Point Cabrillo - 144 mm,f/22,10 sec, ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

The Misty Pool

The Big Guy Made A Mistake...

Zion is a marvelous place. The colors overwhelm and there is just so much to see and photograph. But there is a problem. We are told to seek the light during the 'golden hour' around sunrise and sunset. That's when the light is best ... at it's warmest. Shooting at midday creates harsh images that impress no one. So, I go out to shoot in the evening and what do I get? Shadows everywhere and nothing approaching what the masters tell us is the holly grail of light. Why, you ask? Because Zion Canyon runs North to South, with towering cliffs and majestic peaks on both sides. So, for example, if you're shooting around the Temple of Sinawava in the canyon's far north, the bottom of the canyon goes into shadow around 4 in the afternoon. Now, shadow is OK but it's not the glowing warmth we all seek. Shadow obscure detail and give the image a cool, blue cast. If that's what you want then that's great but not when you're trying to capture the amazing earth tones of the massive cliffs that grace both sides of the canyon. So, I've a small request for the great creator ... could you shift the canyon toward the east-west axis? Just a bit ... maybe 20-30 degrees so the sun washes those majestic walls with some of that 'golden hour' blow? That's not too much to ask ... is it?

The Cool Pool

If you take the Zion park shuttle to the last stop ... the Temple of Sinawava ... and follow the river trail to it's end (where groups enter the river to see the Narrows), there's a place where two massive boulders have joined to create a neat little waterfall. What's really cool about this place is how the water, filled with air bubbles, actually pushes under the surface and then surges upward, creating this iridescent pool filled with bubbling water. When light hits the pool, the bubbles reflect it upward and you get this really interesting glow. The effect is enchanting.

One of the areas I'm really interested in is taking pictures through very dark ND filters ... at least 10 stops. I've got a Lee Big Stopper which is rated at 10 stops and I've been itching to try it out. When I saw this pool, I just knew it was perfect for some experimentation. So, I set the camera as close to the pool as I could and set up the exposure. I wanted a really long shot, at least a minute, to get that etherial 'mist' appearance, where all the structure of the water disappears and all that's left is a 'fog' hovering over the surface. I set the camera at f/8 and that gave me 100 seconds. Perfect!

Now, I had a slightly different image in mind when I took this shot. I love the mist but thought it would be really interesting if I brought back some of the swirling, bubbly exuberance that was the real image. To accomplish that, I took several normal exposures of the pool and then use Photoshop to combine them into a final composition. The result is shown below.

The Misty Pool - 35mm (1.6 crop), f/18, various times, ISO 100
license CC BY-NC 4.0

I had several shots through the ND filter and wanted to combine them in Photomatix so I could get a bit of the HDR look. In particular, I wanted to pull out more intensity from the surrounding rocks and to emphasize the 'glow' in the pool. Then, I took the HDR result into Photoshop and used the brush tool to selectively bring out the bubbles and swirls. I thing the effect look interesting, don't you?