San Gregorio State Beach, California

Nikon N90s, 80-200mm f2.8D(N), Elite II 100, handheld

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 10, 1998

Answers

My friend calls this my Baywatch picture :)

In addition to any general comments, I have a particular question with this shot.

No amount of stopping down was going to give me adequate depth of field. I figured that the moving elements (waves and bubbles) weren't going to be sharp no matter what I did at the slow shutter speed I was ending up with, so I focused primarily on clouds and then touched focus slightly closer. A more Solomon-like choice would have been poor, since the only thing at sharp focus would be the crashing waves, which would blur anyways. Focusing on the foreground would have been the other choice, since the bubbles moved slowly, leaving the horizon line and clouds very soft.

What do y'all think of the choice?

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 10, 1998.

if depth of field was your primary concern, the obvious answer was: use a tripod. but a pretty nice shot, anyway.

-- wayne harrison (wayno@netmcr.com), December 11, 1998.

I think I would have focussed on the foreground... as it is, the whole picture is kind of soft, which is OK in the background, but distracting up front. Just MHO.

Nice color, of course.

-- Pete Su (psu@jprc.com), December 11, 1998.

I think that this image would have been improved by waiting 10 more minutes.

-- Gary Whalen (whalen@circle.net), December 11, 1998.

Pete, thanks, I think you're right. I guess if I'd chosen to focus the foreground, the clouds would just look a little hazier than they actually were and the sun wasn't going to have crisp edges anyways. Bad choice.

Wayne, it may not be so obvious an answer. To get the symmetry and the reflections I wanted in the image, I was sitting down and the immediate foreground was about 5 feet away. Even with a tripod, I don't think there's any way you're getting enough depth of field to get everything between 5-10 feet and infinity in sharp focus with a long lens without tilts. A tripod would have given me steadier out of focus images, though :)

Gary, interesting comment, how would 10 minutes have helped? I took pictures until the sun hit the horizon and the image just got really red and the exposure range got more and more unmanagable. Do you mean the sun should be lower in the sky or the colors should be redder or that the waves should have been silhouttes?

Thanks!

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 11, 1998.

Andrew -

This might be interesting if you didn't try for the symmetry.Keep the sand lit up a little but not the hard reflection of sun and a little more sky? The ocean seems to divide the photo in half. It would be fun to experiment with the variations. Pretty image.

Ben

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 14, 1998.

Thanks Ben, I'm always shooting sunsets (like a lot of people!), so I'll try more variations.

A friend recently pointed out how truly stuck on symmetry I was in this picture: notice that the ridge of the large breaking wave slopes toward the vertical center of the image as you go from left to right, mirroring the wide stream of water in the sand; also the clouds, path of bubbles, and the dark area at the bottom right slope similarly.

I wish I could take credit for that much thought :) Frankly, that wasn't what I was thinking when taking the shot: the waves were breaking from left to right, so I timed it so that the breaking edge was underneath the sun when I took the picture. The shots I took before noticing this are a bit boring, IMO.

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), January 10, 1999.