Urban Garden - Los Angeles

Here’s a different take on a classic location at the DWP building. 2 things that can help enhance a composition are leading lines and using elements to frame your subject. In the scene here the nice pathway winds out towards the city and the arch frames it. This was taken before the clouds took on any real color but there was some nice side light shining on the city from the west. Can you spot the plane? 

Nikon D750, Nikkor 14-24, f/11, 1/100 sec, ISO-200 

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Capturing the Moment - Long Beach CA

  

This was from Signal hill in Long Beach as the sunset colors lingered around long enough for the city lights below to come on. Therefore I snapped on my telephoto to capture a shot of this couple taking a shot of the sunset. The scene is split nicely with the burn up top and the city bokeh below. Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200, f/2.8, 1/20 sec, ISO-1000. VR helped me out here quite a bit and these are the situations when I always use it, especially handholding a low light telephoto shot. 

Light Portal - Palos Verdes seascape

I call this spot little sur. It has the same effect as the sun portal at Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur but on a smaller scale. There’s a cave down in PV that you can get behind and when the tide is low enough and the sun is in the right position you can get beams of light through the opening. Tide was a bit too high and waves were a bit too big to get real close, but I setup on the safety of a higher rock and snapped this as a wave came crashing through the opening. I’ll try my luck here again when the sun realigns. 

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/11, 0.4 sec, ISO-50

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Explosion over Los Angeles

I love these types of cloud formations and we were lucky to catch them behind the city looking north. We arrived just in time to snap a few shots before the light disappeared. The reedit focused on bringing more shadows up from the city as it was a tad dark before. The sky also has a bit more warmer tone to enhance those nice oranges. 

Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200, f/14, 1 sec, ISO-50

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Anza Borrego milky way sculptures

This was the other dino we shot while out in Anza Borrego. I took a few exposures using my iPhone to light the subject and then one for the sky as we were fairly close to the dino so a single exposure would mean the stars wouldn’t be as sharp as they could be. I then stacked the dino exposures in photoshop using the stack mode mean feature to reduce the noise on the dino. I then layered the dino shot onto the sky shot for the final image. 

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/2.5, 15 sec, ISO-6400

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Palos Verdes sunset seascape

This was taken on a day when tide was low enough to get way out on the rocks out at Golden Cove. There was this nice area where the tide would fill up and occasionally overspill onto the rocks I was standing on. I waited for another big set and captured the foreground as the tide was receding back out. Sky had a nice mood to it during golden hour which ended up being too thick for any real burn at sunset so I was glad to capture this scene. 

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/16, 0.5 sec and 1/20 sec blended, ISO-50

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ARTIC circle - Anaheim metro station

A shot from the Artic metro station. The symmetry and lights here are awesome. I used the reflection of the lights on the ground to create a full circle surrounding him. The lights reflect off the opposite building as well. Since the lights keep changing I had a few color combos to choose from but these two seemed to work well. Not the best handheld shooter as I use a tripod 99% of the time. Therefore I’d rather bump my ISO up a bit higher to help ensure a sharper shot. You can reduce noise in post but you can’t fix a blurry photo. Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/6.3, 1/125 sec, ISO-3200

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