Earlier this morning I had a chance to play with my new 10-stop ND filter “Big Stopper” from Lee. I finally got it in the mail after ordering it almost four months ago. So far I’m impressed. I’ll play more with it this weekend, and will leave a more detailed review later.

This photograph is a 10-minute exposure.

This is another shot from an outing with Patrick Smith to the Big Sur where we witnessed what probably was the best light of the season. The color was changing every minute in different parts of the sky and we had to be aware of what was going by taking our eyes off the viewfinder.

You can see Patrick’s shots from that outing here.

Nikon D300
42mm, f/16, 1/20 sec, ISO100
ND Grad 0.9+0.6

When I was in my junior year of college, I had to pick a location where I wanted to work and live following my graduation. I wasn’t going back to Moscow where I grew up, as I decided to stay in the States for a while. I did not want to live where winters are cold either after couple of decades of Russian winters and few more in Utah. But growing up, I was always fascinated with seas and oceans. There is something about the mystery of it and the scale of things that always drew me to it. No wonder I ended up here in Northern California because winters here are now my favorite time of the year.

It’s no wonder that the ocean is now one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I think it’s important that we photograph what we love, otherwise why even bother spending time and money on photography?

Nikon D300
24mm, 1/8 sec, f/16, ISO 100
Lee ND 0.6 + 0.9

I still have a few more photos left to post from the previous outings to the Big Sur in the past few weeks, so here is another one.

I have a feeling that our winter is now over and we’re slowly entering a period of boredom when weeks pass by without a cloud in the sky. To make matters worse, I’ve been extremely busy with a lot of other developments in life, and have not shot as many photos as I would have liked. But there is a time and season for all things, right?

I think I managed to dodge this wave, unlike many others.

That sand, by the way, is my favorite kind of sand of all kinds I have seen in life. It’s warm, soft and clean and extends for miles on this stretch of the Pacific Coast. It’s one of 145 things I love about Northern California.

Nikon D300
14mm, 1/13 sec, f/16, ISO200
ND Grad 0.9

And yet another photo from the Garrapata Beach. Do you think I like this beach?

Before the winter began I set a goal to build a winter set from a spot or several spots around the Big Sur area. It just happened that this place turned out to be Garrapata Beach, a place I visited several times in the last few weeks. I also chose to make it color, because I want the photos to stand together in a set. I may have a few more to upload in the coming weeks, but I think I’m getting ready to shoot something else.

There is something to be said, however, about becoming familiar with the subject. After I visited this place several times in different weather conditions after different tides, I feel that my images from there are becoming more personal, and as I continue building that set, it is capturing the character of the subject better than one photo ever would.

Working in projects also provides structure and motivation.

You can see other images in the set here.

Nikon D300
15mm, 1 sec, f/16, ISO100
ND Grad 0.9 (I think..)

I’m really slow processing the photos from that night, because I’m still bitter about that evening.

The evening at Garrapata Beach at Big Sur was going fine. Beautiful light, no wind, big waves (it was the day before the Mavericks competition took place), no one but me and a few teenagers at the beach. What could go wrong, right?

Oh, as always, many things. I left my camera bag where I thought it was safe, where the sand looked dry, almost all the way at the end of the beach by the cliffs. As I was busy shooting away, I noticed that one big wave seemed to kept going longer than all the others. But it was too late. It went straight through my opened camera bag, soaking everything inside and actually killing my laptop that was still running for whatever reason (don’t you hate it when PC laptops doesn’t properly shut down?). The IT guys at my work found sand and salt on the inside disk of the hard drive. I think that wave killed both the hard drive and the laptop shell.

We must respect the ocean.

Nikon D300
24mm, f/16, 1/20 s, ISO100
Lee ND Grad 0.6 + 0.9

Some shots get you really into the scene, like this one.

Last Sunday was another cloudy post-stormy day here in Northern California, and I met up with Jim Patterson and Kendra back at Garrapata Beach. This time around it was a negative tide, so many layers of sand were gone, revealing all kinds of big rocks and boulders that are typically covered by the sand. In fact, the beach was almost impossible to recognize.

Towards the end of the day I ended up close to these sweet looking rocks that the waves keep beating up on. I love the trails that the waves created, and I wanted to capture the blue colors of that evening, as day turned into night. I dropped by shoes, rolled up my jeans up and stood there for 10-15 minutes watching and shooting these waves. How did end? See that big boy in the background? It got to me, as I was focusing my attention on the foreground, and I end up getting immersed to my chest in the water. Luckily, I grabbed the camera, but my ankle still have bruised from all the rolling rocks that the wave brought with it. Needless to say, I was done with that frame.

Nikon D300
20mm, f/14, 0.6 sec, ISO400
ND Grad 0.9

It’s that time of the year again on the Pacific Coast when the storms come out, when the crowds disappear and when each sunset is rich with variety of color. With that in mind, I drove down to Santa Cruz last night to shoot at a new location where I have not shot before.

Natural Bridges State Beach is a great location any time of the year (for an entirely different outtake of the same scene, for example, check out this shot from my buddy Jim Patterson – link). Looking at the weather forecast yesterday, I noticed that the low tide was coming in right around the sunset, so I thought it might be a good time to try the reflection shot of that arch. As I got to the beach, the dramatic clouds that I saw on the way to the beach cleared, as it often happens, but that still did not take away the color that was changing every moment during the golden/twilight hour.

I’ll be doing a lot more shooting at the coast and elsewhere outdoors in general in the coming months, because I want to continue to build that body of work and shift my focus that way from everything else I was shooting recently.

.. I’m beginning a new series with this image that I’d like to title “Where I Belong”.

I have few more of more abstract shots to post like the one I posted yesterday, but before I go that route, I wanted to post a more straight forward view of the redwood trees that I caught on the same day.

Some photos help us remember not the visual sense of the place, but also the feeling and sometimes even the smell of it. This is one of those.