Sea to Summit Workshop – Santa Cruz

I finally got around to join the Sea to Summit Workshops in Santa Cruz ran by Jim Patterson and Josh Cripps.  They hold landscape workshops up and down California coast; and every once in a while, they venture out to the sierras.  Boy, did I learn a lot.

• It gets cold in Santa Cruz.  Even when the sun is out.  In August!
• Be prepared to get wet if you want to capture interesting shots.
• Your lens gets dirty (salt spray) even you can’t feel the mist.
• Your tripod will get sand in the legs.  Be prepared to wash them.
• Sky is boring unless there are clouds.  Keep as little of it as possible.
• You need a decent graduated neutral density filter.  Get the 4×6 so you have room to move the edge to the top or bottom of your frame (see previous bullet).
• There is a difference between landscape and seascape when it comes to graduated neutral density filters: a) soft edge works well for landscape, b) hard edge works better for seascape since there is usually a very clear horizon and when the sun sets, it gets very bright right at the horizon.
• Experiment with the timing of the wave when doing long exposure.  Shots taken while waves crash in vs. while waves recede have very different look.
• Composition is everything.  Having a leading line definitely helps.
• You CAN shoot into the sun, see picture below; provided that you have the correct graduated ND filter.  This is something I avoided at all cost in the past.

The location of these pictures is what locals call Hole-in-the-Wall beach.  Because, you literally need to walk through a hole in the wall (cliff) to get to the beach.  I need to find time to go back there when there are killer clouds.  The hole should also a great location for portraits.  I need to figure out how to convince Ann to let me do her swim wear catalog.

I did have to post-process the picture to bring out the contrast and details.  For the above picture, I didn’t have the hard edge GND filter.  So I processed the raw file in two exposures – one for the ocean and the rock, then the 2nd about -1.5 stops for the sky.  I then overlay the sky on top of the normal exposure using mask.