Bean Hollow SB

Hurt My Back

I've always had a touchy back. There are spots where I have little feeling and some even tingle at times. I'm also quite susceptible to sprains. Last year I did a number on my upper back and, just last week, did a real number on my lower back. Not sure how it happened. I painted the kid's bedroom on the 3rd and 4th of November and also had to get on a ladder and clean the top of her big closet on the 6th. No big issues at that point but a few days later ... WOW. Was sitting on the couch watching TV and went to stand up. Full scale pain explosion which literally brought me to my knees. Couldn't walk or bend at all and even sitting was a real painful experience. No idea where the damage originated but it was a major episode. I applied heat and started pumping ibuprofen like crazy in hopes I could cut the pain down a little so I could function. It took most of a week until I got to the point where I was able to do anything useful and now, 9 days later, I'm off the meds and able to move around for the most part. Still have some pain ... where the back muscles attach to my hip bone ... and some stiffness. Really hoping this gets significantly better or I'm in trouble with this year's trip. No way can I carry around all my camera gear and hike long distances with a back like this. No real physical therapy in Crimea so I'm out on that score. If I'm still troubled I'll have to bite the bullet and find someone in Albuquerque who can maybe help me. A chiropractor would be a good choice and maybe someone who can give me some pain meds when it gets worse. Damn ... I hate growing old.

Bean Hollow State Beach

Travel down California rt. 1 from San Francisco and you come to the town of Pescadero. That's where you'll find Bean Hollow State Beach. What an amazing place. The ocean has carved the most intricate shapes in the soft sandstone. All kinds of hollow spots and interconnecting ridges make for the intricate webs one finds walking around the place. I was fortunate to be there on a day when the clouds and sun cooperated. It was a bit stormy and waves were crashing on the rocks. I got really lucky on this shot as a wave was just cresting as the shutter cycled. It actually looks like some aliens sculpted these rocks. It's surreal. I highly recommend visiting if you're in the area.

This is a sequence of 3 images, run through photomatix and then finished in lightroom. Hope you enjoy.

Bean Hollow SB - 28mm, f/22,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Heceta Light - redux

Cassini's End

I don't know if you are a space nut ... someone who hangs on everything NASA and others do in space ... but you can't be uninterested in the Cassini mission to Saturn. What an amazing piece of engineering and human persistence. Almost 20 years from beginning to end and essentially flawless. And the science they accomplished ... it is hard to even comprehend everything they discovered. Such an amazing place with the rings and the moons. There may very well be primitive life on at least one of those moons. And what a spectacular place Titan has turned out to be. An actual methane driven atmosphere with a 'water' cycle of evaporation, rain and flowing rivers along with large lakes of liquid methane. There will be more missions to explore this moon and all the others plus someone will eventually put a probe into the Saturn atmosphere that can survive for some time and see exactly what lies at it's core. Put the pressures and temperatures are extreme so it will have to be a truly magnificent machine. I won't be around for it but my kids will.

Heceta Light - redux

Last time I showed you a picture of the Heceta Lighthouse, in Oregon. It was done using HDR and Photomatix. I had some major issues with that image and finally was pushed to make the leap to blending in Photoshop as a way of fixing the problems. In particular, when you use tone mapping to blend different exposures, major defects show up. For one, if there is any noise in the images, tone mapping accentuates them horribly until they look like popcorn all over your image. The only way to eliminate this graininess is to either noise reduce all the bracketed images before you run through HDR or to aggressively noise reduce the final image afterwards. The image from last time used the latter approach. But removing all this noise also softens the image and it just doesn't look all that attractive. Second, any dust on the sensor really shows up in the final image. I had to remove dozens of these spots from the HDR image. It takes time and the results aren't always that good. I have some images that I can't even show you because the sky is just so "dirty" from the HDR process that it's embarrassing. Finally, the tone mapping process distorts the true colors in the image and I often see sunsets that are just "weird" and not nearly true to what I saw. So, especially with sunrise/sunset images I have to find another process that isn't so brutal to my vision.

A few months ago I found a photographer who has come to the same conclusion. His name is Jimmy McIntyre, a scotsman. He tried HDR and was not impressed. He has developed a complete set of actions for Photoshop that make blending bracketed shots almost easy and the results are really nice. Not to say there are's issues but one can always find ways to correct them. I bought a set of his actions a while back (RyaPro) that are a big help and he's put together a complete course that you can buy at the same time that shows how to use blending to get really spectacular images. I'm not shilling for him and not getting any compensation for telling you about his stuff ... just pointing out a nice resource to make blending in Photoshop a bit easier.

Anyway, a few days ago I jumped into this whole blending process and ran the bracketed images of the lighthouse as my first attempt. It wasn't easy and wasn't without some issues but the result, shown below, is a big step up from the HDR image I showed last time (I've included both below so you can toggle back and forth to see the differences). Notice how much sharper the blended image is. There were almost no dust spots in the blended image and the noise was much reduced. Also, notice how the water by the white walls is distorted and softened in the HDR image. I see that quite often in HDR images and am not sure what causes it. Almost always shows when transitioning between dark and light areas. It's called a halo and is a big artifact of HDR. I've lost count of the images I've had to throw away because a halo showed up when I got into Lightroom.

So compare these images. Don't worry about the contrails, I just didn't take the time to remove them from the HDR image. But look at the lighthouse and especially the light. The red roof is actually red in the blended image, not magenta like in the HDR. And the sunset just looks more natural, don't you think? I really like how this image came out. So if you use HDR and it's not really making you feel great about your images, look into Jimmy's stuff and study blending in Photoshop. There are a lot of nice tools there just for this process. It's actually forcing me to learn how to use PS ... not a bad upside to the whole process.

Heceta Light - HDR version

Heceta Light - Blended version

Heceta Light

The Cleanup

Irma is now history, except for some lingering rain in the southeast. We dodged a big bullet as the eye went to the west of Miami, sparing the city a big disaster. But the flooding and wind damage in the Keys and along the west coast of Florida is still extreme and it will take years to mend the damage. Not going to get on any soapbox this time, just extend my best wishes and thoughts for all those who were impacted by this storm. I hope you can recover and carry on with your lives. But I fear that Irma is just the first of many storms that will pound the US and the Caribbean in the coming years. I know we are not ready for any of this. Our politicians and far too many of us have ignored all the warnings and now we face the future with our heads firmly planted up our collective a$$. Welcome to the future.

Hillary's book

I see that the Clinton has penned yet another book. "What Happened" without the "?" is a good title but she should have put that extra punctuation there because it really is a question. Not one she wants to honestly answer unfortunately. So vain that she can't look inside herself and see what a horrible human being she has become. It's testament to her badness that, even now, with all the bad stuff we know about Trump, there are still questions about whether she would have been worse. That's really sad.

Heceta Light

I really like this lighthouse. The location is spectacular and it's location high on a cliff gives it so much more prominence. I spent much of a day there, shooting and just drinking in the amazing atmosphere. I spent some time talking with the guides who give tours of the house and tell the history. They were very helpful in showing me a hidden path up the hill, behind the light. where I was able to take this image. It would have been much better had the clouds cooperated and the ever present jet trails not been there but one cannot control that which is uncontrollable. Vapor trails are now a fact of life that all landscape photographers have to deal with. I could go into Photoshop and remove them, of course, but it would be a long and difficult process to get right. I've seen enough photographs with "ghosts" in the sky where the process was not correct and I've done enough repairing of images to know just how hard it is. This is especially true around clouds. I'll probably take the image for a spin in Photoshop sometime in the future and, if things work out, I'll repost the results. I also want to try blending the images to see if the funny "halo" around the white base goes away. That's an artifact of HDR that is hard to remove. Blending may just do the trick.

Anyway, this is composed of 3 bracketed images, run through Photomatix to blend them together and then finished in Lightroom. Amazing location.

Heceta Light - 35mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 200,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Sonoma Coast

Charlottesville...

I'm not going to say much about the confrontation that took place yesterday in VAI've been warning family and friends for years that the "calm" we've seen in the last few decades was an illusion. The race hatred and all the other bigotries have always been there. It just took Trump and years of bad economy to bring it all back to the surface. The Republican party has been fanning these flames for a long time and now they are a raging inferno that may very well consume America. I have no great ideas about how to fix this ... it's been part of my country from the very beginning. The great melting pot was always a joke. Trump may very well be the lit match thrown onto the gasoline soaked hate that was always there. I'm actually glad this is now out in the open where all the smug elites can see/smell it first hand. Congratulations ... you've just kindled the fires that may very well consume you. Guess what ... it's the economy stupid! It always has been. Provide everyone with a good job and all this crap disappears. But you bought into the neoliberal bulls**t and now it's come back to bite you. And, in what has to be the greatest irony, it's happening all over the world. There's no safe haven for you to hide in this time. Get used to looking over your shoulders because that's the new norm. Payback's a bitch!

Sonoma Coast

I love driving the west coast. It's so beautiful and there's always somewhere that just begs for a picture. Sonoma is mostly known for it's wineries but the coast is also a magical place. This image was taken at Coleman Beach. The clouds/fog was very cooperative that evening and I was able to get a really nice sunset. This is a panorama made up of HDR images. There's a lot of work in cleaning up the blending which sometimes goes funny as the light changes from one panel to the next. There are 85 images in the mix, 17 sets of 3 bracketed shots. Each panel takes upwards of 2-3 minutes to shoot so you can easily have 30 minutes between the first panel and the last. The light changes a great deal in that time frame so I often have to work the image to repair these changes. It's part of the process and a reason why these types of shots are so hard to execute. I've spent several years perfecting the technique and still confront issues with almost every one. Stitching together panoramas isn't always foolproof and I often have to repair damage caused by the software. It's not unusual for me to spent a day with a single image. But the results are worth all the effort. You'll not find more dramatic images than these. I really hope you enjoy them.

Coleman Beach, Sonoma - 24mm,f/16.HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Big Sur #1

So What Happened...

You are all very aware of my issues with money and Crimea. The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), has a stranglehold on the Crimea and refuses to let any money into the place no matter the need. I've tried every method known to man, including VISA, Western Union and SWIFT, to no avail. I have to resort to the most draconian methods to get living expenses to my family. What's really frustrating is the folks at OFAC told me directly that living money for personal expenses was OK with them and yet they make it nearly impossible to do just that. This choking of Crimea has reduced the place to near poverty for most as there are only local and rather ineffective banks with little money and no services other than paying utilities which they charge far too much for.

Well, this trip home I tried to send money to the daughter of my wife's cousin, who just graduated university in Ukraine and needed some money to rent a flat and buy some furniture. I figured, wrongly, that SWIFT would be able to handle this as Ukraine is not under any sanctions. Unfortunately, the girl isn't totally aware of the nuances of OFAC control and she listed her home address in Crimea by mistake. Her family lives in Simferopol and, due to the way Ukraine deals with college students and the fact that they still claim Crimea as part of the country, her home address was listed as Crimea, part of Ukraine. Students don't have addresses in the town where they attend school and the bank required her 'real' home address which was Crimea. This little slip seems to have caused OFAC to decide I was trying to send money to Crimea and they blocked the transaction. Now, what really gets my hackles up is the fact that no one bothered to let me know that the transaction was blocked. For 4 weeks my bank kept telling me the money was in Ukraine when, as far as I could tell, it was in an account with OFAC. After 4 weeks of frustration on my side and on the Ukraine side I finally went to my bank and cancelled the whole transfer. It took 10 days to find the money and bring it back. Still don't have a complete explanation of where the money went and why it didn't get to Ukraine but that's the way these government agencies work. They do whatever they want and if it blows up your life ... too bad. There is no accountability and this clusterf**k of an operation has so much power to destroy lives and countries. They are the group that starved 500,000 kids to death in Iraq because they decided that medicines and food had military applications and therefore they were not allowed. Evil personified.

Unfortunately, this fiasco diverted my attention for over a month and kept me from setting up the website for my business and from getting my image sales started. By the time the dust settled on this disaster it was just too late to do anything. So the business is not yet running and there is no website. I hope to get it setup while I'm still in Crimea this time so there's something to sell when I get back in country next spring. I hope...

Big Sur #1

One of my bucket list items for this cycle was to spend time in Big Sur. It is such a spectacular place with cliffs and big surf and too many places to photograph. That was my intention ... but the weather had other ideas. The massive storms last spring washed out huge sections of rt. 1 on the coast, closing everything from Ragged Point in the south to Big Sur Station in the north ... essentially the entire Big Sur area. So I was reduced to driving as far as the closure at Ragged Point, then backtracking to rt. 101 and going north to where I could get to rt. 1 and driving south to Big Sur Station. I got a nice taste of the area but a thorough expedition has to wait for another cycle. However, I do have a not so nice memory of that trip. I stopped in a McDonalds in Salinas before turning west toward the coast. I ordered a chicken sandwich. After taking a few bites I noticed the lettuce was bad, covered with black spots and had a not so pleasant smell. I took it off the sandwich and stupidly ate the rest. I should have taken it back to the counter but was in a hurry to get back on the road. By the time I hit Big Sur Station my stomach was starting to rock and roll and a few miles north I was forced to find a place to park and be really sick. It was a miserable night on the side of the road and I didn't feel even a bit better until the sun was coming up. That's the first time McDonalds sold me bad food and it may be the last time I ever buy from them. Every time I went into a McD to check the Internet my stomach started rocking. Something like that sticks with you for a long time.

Anyway, before I got sick I was able to find a couple of nice spots to photograph. I'm not sure exactly where this location is, but it was just north of the town of Big Sur. Storm was brewing and surf was up big time so the image came out really well. This is a panorama made from HDR images. Lots of work to get everything right. Still a little rough in spots but I wanted to get the image out there so everyone could see it. Enjoy.

Big Sur 1 - 24mm,f/20,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Point Reyes Light

Further Update...

Unfortunately, still not sure what happens with trip. Had talk with wife about it and she is resisting very much. Seems my asthma doesn't matter as much as her inconvenience. I'm still going and it will, eventually, come to a shove on my part but I'll keep trying for a few more days to get it done with diplomacy. I need to get a few months stateside to find out what's happening and to let the dry desert air work on cleaning out my sick lungs. There's no other way, short of very strong and dangerous medicines, to do that. I much prefer the dry air, thank you very much.

Point Reyes Light

It's a long drive from rt. 1 out to the Point Reyes lighthouse and the road isn't all that much fun. There are many dairy farms along the road and one has to be aware of all the cows. Plus, the winds whip up sand and make the road dangerous along with it not always being a safe road with lots of blind corners and whatnot. After all that effort, you arrive at the parking lot below the light. There's nothing there but a driveway leading upwards and a very long and exhausting climb. By the time you reach the top, you're exhausted and hoping there's something worthwhile at the end. Imagine how disappointing it is when you finally reach the end and find ... this.

Point Reyes Light - 121mm(1.6 crop),f/22,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Not exactly a classic example of lighthousing, is it? The explanation is simple enough ... there was no need for a tall base given the light was already hundreds of feet above the water. And, according to the explanation, the trip to the light by mule team took a looooong time and it just didn't make any sense to waste all that energy on frills. So they built a minimal light, powered by coal and steam. It did it's job for a very long time and that's why it's famous. Add to all this the light was closed, in the late afternoon, so we (there were several of us who made the arduous climb) were forced to take pictures from an overlook several hundred feet above the light. It was a gray day (fog again) and colors weren't forthcoming so I had to make due with what I was given. This is a 3 image HDR and I worked very hard to find color in the final composition but there's just not much there. If I push too hard the whole image goes to hell and that's not going to please anyone. So you see a nice blue sign (bottom center) and some pretty rust streaks (on the light) and a bit of oxidized copper (roof vent on the attached building) and that's it. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. That's life for the photographer. That's why it's so hard to get that amazing image that pops. Everything has to be perfect and all too often it's not. But still, it's an OK picture, isn't it? At least the composition is good.

South of Monterey

Sabotage

It's been an interesting couple of days.Woke up Saturday morning to the news that a group of Right Sector thugs (the ultra nationalist group from Ukraine) had blown up several power lines carrying electricity to Crimea. One line survived despite their best efforts so we had just enough power to make it through the day. But, just after midnight on Sunday morning the power went out in our flat and stayed off for several hours. Found out later that the Ukrainian power company had shut down the remaining line due to "power anomalies". Not sure what that means but it doesn't really matter. Suddenly Crimea was down to diesel generators and we didn't have enough of those to cover all the demand. Lucky for us we live near the legislature in Simferopol (which seems to have been protected with it's own generator) and had electricity for most of the day. Not so lucky the rest of Crimea where most people have no power and not much else. My mother-in-law had basically nothing but cold water and, sometimes, a phone. Unfortunately, our luck was not to hold and we lost everything around 5:30 pm on Monday and stayed dark until early Tuesday morning. We're told we should get used to this as it's the new normal for a while. For whatever reason Crimea was not ready for this to happen despite warnings that Ukraine might cut us off at any time. It seems the earliest we can expect some relief is late December. Not sure how we hold on if the weather, which has been unseasonably warm, decided to turn nasty. It could turn into a major disaster as, without electricity to run our heater and no heat, our flat would become very uncomfortable. I can only hope for a warm spell lasting well into the new year. For once, global warming may just help us 'weather' this situation.

South of Monterey

I have to apologize for this photo. I know it was taken between Big Sur and Monterey but that's a close as I can remember. Was driving along highway 1 around 9 am and saw these rocks and it was just so damn beautiful. Spend most of an hour shooting here and came away with some pretty awesome pictures. The overcast only served to increase my saturation and obviate the need for HDR or bracketing. This is a single image, run through Lightroom. Isn't it amazing?

South of Monterey - 78mm(1.6 crop), f/11,1/10 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Point Estero Sunset

A Few Updates...

The spayed female has, to some extent, returned to her old self. She was just in pain and doing what cats do in that condition. She's still walking a bit gingerly but has started coming out of hiding and is interacting with the other cats. she's sitting on the window of my office as I type and watching me intently. Think she'll make it.

The anticipated clash between the West and Russia seems to be cooling. Russia is pounding the hell out of Syria right now and working with France and even America to form some type of coalition to do battle with ISIS. Not sure that's the best way to defeat these fanatics but if all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. We'll see how things work out (or not) going forward.

Point Estero Sunset

As I was driving north toward San Francisco I came across Point Estero. Just south of Big Sur it's a nice photo spot overlooking the ocean. I got there later in the day and decided to see if there were any interesting spots. It's a several mile long overlook with paths so it wasn't really very hard to walk along the cliff until I found what I wanted. Met a local who walked there every day and we talked a bit about California and what's happening in the country. I was watching the sky as we talked and was disappointed to see yet another fog layer forming. In this part of the world, fog usually doesn't come all the way down to the ground but hovers a few thousand feet up so it just tops the coastal mountains. You can get some interesting shots when the sun is peeking between the fog and the water but you need to be in the right spot. I found my rock but was unhappy to see that the sun was too far north and went behind a mountain range (to the right side of the photo). But, since I was already out there and several miles from my truck, I set up the camera and took some bracketed sequences anyway. Was hoping something interesting would come from the experience and I wasn't totally disappointed. Worked in Photomatix and Lightroom to get something nice. Sorry it's not going to knock your socks off but what can I say. Sometimes you have to make due with what nature gives you.

Point Estero - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Los Padres Sunset

DaVinci Resolve

I've been spending the last week learning about new things. Lots of reading from the internet and dipping my fingers gently into new software. All in preparation for the next cycle when I want to get more heavily into video and extend my mastery of the photographic and the moving image. I'm not sure yet what type of project that will be but it happens in and around LA. I'm narrowing my choice for the next camera (hint ... it's between the Canon 5D Mk 3 and the Sony A7 Mk 2). I'm convinced I want to stay away from the really high resolution rigs for now as they are 1) very expensive and 2) fraught with issues. With the 5D Mk 3 I can get reasonable resolution (22.1 Megapixels) plus can install Magic Lantern and get 14 bit raw video at HD resolution and up to 30 fps. Imagine ... video with higher color depth than a professional movie camera costing a large fortune. I've seen some of the video from this hack and it's almost orgasmic. And I can color grade it in DaVinci Resolve (lite for now as the full package costs almost a grand). So, for the last several days, I've been reading and playing with a very powerful and capable system to color correct and grade my footage. It's not for the faint of heart as the software is the exact same code used by the major studios to grade their movies. But mastering this package gives me the ability to really extract the maximum from that raw footage. That's if I get the Canon ... no such capability from any of the Sony cameras unfortunately. All 8 bit and that's not all that good. One would get the impression I've made up my mind ...

Los Padres Sunset

I drove the California coast from north of LA to almost Eureka and saw an amazing number of beautiful shots. I've got thousands of images to work through and that's going to take some time. But one of the best images came from an overlook in the Los Padres National Forest somewhere south of Big Sur. I was just driving along the coastal road and came upon this place. As is always my way, I parked the truck, ate some lunch and took out my tablet to read while awaiting the sun's end. One never knows what to expect as the afternoon drags on ... will it get too foggy or will all the clouds disappear or ... will everything come together and give me a special image to capture. That's what makes this business so interesting and so damn frustrating. I've read stories of photogs who hung out in one place for days awaiting that perfect set of conditions. I didn't have time for that this cycle but next time I'll be doing just that ... spending days in one place, taking the same images each time but waiting for the best conditions. I'll be covering southern California very thoroughly so expect some really interesting results.

Anyway, this is an HDR panorama of the little bay as the sun set behind some really nice clouds. It wasn't exactly stormy but could have been. I think the plants at the bottom are a form of sage which was blooming at the time. It's always nice to have living ground cover instead of ugly rocks. Would have been nicer with some waves but one can't be too choosy given I only spent one afternoon there. So, grab a beer or something more refined and sit back to enjoy the view.

Los Padres Sunset - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Santa Monica Pier

Burning Man is Over

I guess the latest burning man ended on Sunday. I've always wondered what it would be like to spend a week in the dust and heat of summer Nevada with 70K other slightly crazy people. I've heard it was much better before it became a success so maybe I'm not really missing anything. That's always the problem with these things ... they start out as really cool ideas and then, because they're cool, they become popular and then mainstream and then ... they're toast because all the people and all the expectations destroy that which made them good in the first place. Every festival like this should have a limited shelf time ... a few years ... and then should be discontinued as a bad idea. Nothing good lasts forever. Humans attach themselves to anything that's too good and destroy it. So it is with burning man ... the extremely wealthy carve out their own little 'gated community' and fill it with million dollar buses and keep everyone else out and ... ruin the whole thing. There ought to be a rule that excludes anyone with too much money. Can't the rest of us 'little people' have something that's exclusively ours?

Santa Monica Pier

It's probably one of the most photographed ferris wheels in the world. Right on the beach, just below the million dollar flats and expensive homes and high class hotels ... there sits the pier. It costs a lot of money just to park there for a few hours. Fortunately, for us photographers, that's not a big concern. The parking concessions shut down around 7 at night and don't start up until well after sunrise so I was able to skip most of the costs. But I had to walk a long distance with my heavy equipment so that's the trade off one has to make. Anyway, I got to the beach just after 7 and lugged my gear down the beach sidewalk until I was pretty close to the pier. Most people had already abandoned the beach and most of the exercisers had already finished their routines and headed for the showers so it was just me and a handful of other photogs wanting to get that signature image. In the spring there's already afternoon fog so getting a blazing sun behind a thin layer of clouds is a long shot at best. And, the air is already pretty heavy with smog so it's problematic one can get that iconic shot. So I put the 70-200 f/4 on the camera and concentrated on the pier. It's really quite colorful with the lights on the wheel and the brightly painted rollercoaster so there's plenty to please the eye. It's a 3 exposure HDR and finished in Lightroom. I worked with the sliders quite a bit to bring out the colors. Hope you enjoy the ride. Keep your arms and legs inside the car at all time and absolutely don't scream!

Santa Monica Pier - 70mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Point Arena Light

West Coast Lighthouses

I'm a big fan of lighthouses. Although they've outlived their purpose in most areas, they are still a big reminder of the hazards ships used to face and man's efforts to mitigate the risks. They are always in the most dramatic places ... near rocky shores or perched precariously on dangerous cliffs ... and manned by the most insanely crazy men (and occasionally women) who sought the solitude and braved the dangers. They are largely ceremonial now, historical landmarks to an age long gone.

I guess I was disappointed by the lighthouses I found in California. I'm used to the dramatic spires of the East, thrusting high into the sky so their lights could be seen for miles. Some of the old houses in California are like that but most are very ugly and lacking in charm. I drove for miles to see the light at Point Reyes and was floored by how downright ugly it was. Same with the light in Pacific Grove, no more than a light perched on the roof of a small house. Really wasn't worth shutter cycles to take a picture. So it was very gratifying to drive out to Point Arena and find the majestic light there... and the dramatic rocks that it was guarding.

Point Arena Light

Near Flumeville in Northern California, on the Shoreline Highway (rt. 1), lies the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands and the Point Arena Lighthouse. It watches over some of the most dangerous hazards in the area. The geology is amazing ... massive blocks of sedimentary rock turned literally on edge by the teutonic forces at work as the Pacific Plate collides with the North American Plate. I'm sure many an ancient ship floundered on these rocks before the light was built in the 1870. Today it's a museum but still ... what a majestic location. After seeing so many disappointing lights it was a huge lift to see one so amazing.

Now there's a back story to this image. I arrived, as I often do, in early afternoon so I could scout the location and find the best vantage point. I wanted to shoot as the sun went down so I hung around to see how the fog developed. As a precaution I took a pano which I'd hoped to process during the afternoon but the weather didn't cooperate and I forgot about it. Turns out the fog rolled in like clockwork ... around 3 pm ... and only got worse as the afternoon progressed. By 7 it was obvious there wouldn't be any sunset so I left. As I said, the images from the pano went into my workstation where they languished until a few days ago. I was going through the catalog and came across the folder in Lightroom. Didn't expect much from the images but took the time to run them quickly through Photomatix and Photoshop. The resulting composite image literally blew my socks off. Amazing colors and the composition was nearly perfect. I make a small jpeg and sent it around to family and friends for their comments.

As I waited for the responses I started looking more carefully at the image. It had serious problems that I hadn't noticed in my rush to get it processed. One major problem with HDR appears when there is motion in the scene and the various images have differences. You often get 'ghosts' ... streaks and shadows in your images that cause major disturbances, especially when you try to make a panorama. In this case, Photomatix left huge holes, black areas, in the images which ruined the pano big time. There was also the ever present popcorn noise although it was diminished because the sky was dark. And, when HDR merges images with movement it often creates a muddled result that's not really acceptable for a professional image. These were all issues I had to fix. Fortunately, Photomatix has tools for dealing with ghosts and muddled images and I was able to use them to eliminate the major problems. But it took many iterations to get it right as a fix in one area would create a problem in another. Photoshop's ability to merge images isn't one of its really strong points and sometimes a merge line runs right through the middle of a major focal point (like cutting the light house in half so the top was displaced to the right of the bottom ... a very major muddle). It took several days to get everything right but the result was definitely worth the effort. I'd have to classify this image as one of the best and most stunning of all the photos I took during this cycle. It may be the crown jewel of my trip ... don't you agree?

Point Arena Light - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

One PS: the light from the 'light' is faked ... most lights today don't sweep dramatically across the water anymore ... it takes too much electricity ... so to add drama I created scatter from an imaginary light because that's what we all expect from our keepers. It's not a deception if I tell you about it and almost every photographer does it. It's expected after all.