Photograph: Rocks and Fog, Point Lobos

Rocks and Fog, Point Lobos

Posted on 27 July 2011

Rocks and Fog, Point Lobos

A rocky peninsula drops into the ocean on a foggy morning at Point Lobos State Reserve.

On this morning it was foggy and drizzling at Point Lobos and there was a surprising amount of surf for a summer morning. When I arrived shortly after the park opened, there were few other people about. With the moving water and the low light conditions, I decided that this was a good time to do some work with long daytime exposures, so I got out my 9-stop neutral density filters and went about looking for compositions.

After shooting down closer to the water in the cove to the left of these rocks, I wandered up a trail along the shoreline that took me to a point that was a bit higher above the water. As I looked back I saw that the rocks that defined the cove that I had been shooting appeared to head straight out into the water towards a distant peninsula and then submerge – a rather different take on this feature.

By using this filter I was able to get an eight-second exposure in this light. Longer would have been better, but the light was beginning to come through the fog a bit and I didn’t have much choice. With an exposure this “short” I had to be a bit careful about timing the shots, trying to get the right amount of water breaking over the rocks.

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Category: Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean
Tags: big sur, bird, black and white, california, carmel, coast, conglomerate, county, fog, island, lobos, mist, monochrome, monterey, nature, north america, ocean, pacific, park, peninsula, photo, point, reflection, reserve, rocks, sea, shadow, shore, state, stock, strata, surf, usa, wave

2 comments to Rocks and Fog, Point Lobos

Richard Glenn

says:

July 27, 2011 at 7:59 am

I love these “long” daytime exposures. As I have no filters, I usually go for the more generic sunset and sunrise “long” exposures with generally the same effect. I like how you captured and explaind the rocks submerging into the surf, reminds me of the back of a dinosaur.

G Dan Mitchell

says:

July 29, 2011 at 9:29 pm

Thanks, Richard. There rocks are interesting – from one angle they just look like an offshore row that is parallel to the shore, but from this angle they seem to extend into the water and submerge.

Dan