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Surf, Partington Cove (2011)
Big Sur, California
The night and morning was
stormy. Rain fell on the coast and snow
accumulated in the mountains. The wind
whipped up the Pacific Ocean and large swells
rolled in, crashing on the rocky cliffs of
Partington Cove. The clouds cleared away
and the sun came out. It was a perfect
time for some dramatic photography.
I am mesmerized by surf,
especially when it comes crashing in as it was
this day. I find it exciting and
completely enthralling. I cannot tear
myself away.
I had now idea what we were
in for as we parked the car off of famous
California Highway 1 and headed down the broad
trail (actually an old road). In the past
Partington Cove was used as a place where ships
docked and took on cargos of tanbark. The
dock is only accessible through a 60 foot
tunnel. It's a dramatic way to reach the
cove. The view down the coast is
spectacular but on a day such as this day, all
the action was happening in the cove.
I started shooting with a
composition that looked down the coast, taking
in the cove and the cliffs beyond. I used
a wide angle lens to capture the grandeur of the
whole scene. I was also using short
shutter speeds to capture the foam from the
waves that crashed into the rocks. I
quickly fell into the rhythm of the ocean as the
large waves come in sets. The cove would
alternate between being a turmoil of crashing
water and a calm, peaceful harbor. Then,
after a while another set of large waves would
roll in and the action would start all over
again.
After photographing for
quite some time with the wide angle lens I got a
feeling for where the greatest action was and
switched to a telephoto. I was still
shooting very short exposures to catch the drama
of the waves crashing on the rocks. Many
minutes went by as I happily fired away.
Normally I'm pretty
conservative with the number of images I capture
at any given location. But when
photographing moving water all of that goes out
the window and the pace of shooting becomes fast
and furious. I put the camera drive in
multiple exposure and click off three to five
exposures at a time, trying to catch the perfect
combination of wave and splash. The image
count goes up really fast and soon I've shot
several hundred photographs.
It was almost as an
afterthought that I added a variable neutral
density filter to the telephoto to extend the
shutter speed. With the lowest
possible ISO (100), a high f/stop (f/22 or f/32)
and maximum ND filtration (about 8 stops) I was
able to get the exposure time up to 0.4 seconds.
This is still a rather short shutter speed by
today's standards. Most photographers go
for the silky look but I still like to see the
texture and power of the water. And the
0.4 sec exposure time turned out to be perfect.
I continued to fire away.
And as I did I realized that on rare occasion
water would be pouring off the foreground rock
from an earlier wave while the next wave was
crashing on the rock in the back. I
thought this created a compelling composition so
I tried to time the exposures to capture this
moment. And that's exactly what I got.
Of hundreds of images I
captured in the span of the 30 to 45 minutes I
was there, this is the one image that had it all
and then some. I got the water on both the
foreground and background rocks like I wanted.
And the 0.4 second exposure emphasized the
dramatic contour of the water. And as good
fortune and a little bit of persistence would
have it the forms created by the water achieved
a balance and continuity that is at once
exhilarating and very satisfying. The
moment was captured.
The post processing was not
difficult. I had paid careful attention to
the histogram while shooting so there weren't
any clipping issues with the whites of the
waves. I mostly focused on the color
palette to ensure that the warm tones of the
rocks provided a nice contrast to the incredible
blues of the water.
The end result is a
photograph that conjures up images of great
paintings of the surf that capture a romantic
inspired moment of the power and force of
nature. Needless to say, I'm very pleased
with the results.
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