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