Winter Sunset, Waddell Beach. Big Basin State Park, Pacific Coast, California. December 20, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Pacific Ocean coastal winter sunset at Waddell Beach, Big Basin State Park, California.
Getting this photograph was a long story with a surprise ending.
Late this morning my sons asked me if I would drive them to San Francisco and to their respective apartments. I didn’t have any other concrete plans so I said yes and decided to pack a lighter than usual selection of camera equipment and a tripod on the off chance that I’d find something to photograph. By the time we finished lunch in the Mission and drove through the Haight out to the Richmond and I finally traversed 19th Avenue to the south and got out of urban traffic… it was 3:00 p.m… and starting to rain – not exactly what I had in mind for photography.
I figured I might as well drive down the coast through Pacifica, and as I did so the rain began to increase a bit. Photography was looking less likely. But then I noticed that this seemed to be one of those northern California storms that cuts off fairly abruptly south of San Francisco and that the rain was diminishing as I drove down the coast. With this in mind I decided to get past Half Moon Bay and then see how far south I could get while the light was still good. I finally ended up in the large parking lot by the Beach where Waddell Creek emerges from the mountains of Big Basin State Park and merges with the ocean. Unfortunately, nothing was striking me as especially photogenic about the scene – there were interesting clouds, but there are often clouds this interesting and the light was otherwise not inspiring me.
So I got decided that it had been a fun drive and that I’d get back in the car and head home via Santa Cruz without any photographs. I pulled out of the parking lot… and about five seconds later as I crossed the Waddell Creek bridge I happened to glance down and toward the water… and I had one of those “Whoa!” moments as I saw this reflection in the pool where the creek reaches the beach. I quickly did a u-turn, came back and parked the car, grabbed my gear, and headed back across the road… hoping the light would hold long enough to make a few exposures of this thin strand of beach suspended between the real and reflected skies.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
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Hi Mary. No, I didn’t use any filters on this one. For a typical coastal sunset photo with colorful evening clouds and shadowed foreground, using a GND or bracketed exposures is pretty much a necessity, but this beautiful diffused and soft light didn’t require it this time. The dynamic range just barely fit. A few tiny brightest areas of the clouds were just a tiny bit “hot,” and there are some dark logs at the far left that go to black, but I was able to control both in post.
Speaking of post, I did a bit of typical work on this shot. I had to balance the colors a bit since the image seemed a bit too blue to me in its original form – not quite the way I recalled in in my mind’s eye. I did slightly different curve adjustments on the upper and lower sections of the scene, mainly to slightly increase mid-tone contrast. I also brought back just a bit of the shadow detail along the dark face of the bluff. I used a bit of dodging to deal with some differences in brightness in the left area of the sky.
I thought about retouching out the small power poles on the bluff along Highway 1 at the left but decided to leave them in – they aren’t too obtrusive and they are part of this coastal scene.
Dan, did you use a NG filter on that shot? The reflections add so much to this composition. Well seen.