Category: Half Moon Bay

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Black and White Fujifilm X100S Half Moon Bay Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Fujifilm X100S VSCO Film

The Old Pier at Pillar Point Harbor

The Old Pier - Princeton Harbor - 2013

Yesterday, Doug Kaye and I met for lunch at Pasta Moon in Half Moon Bay (a wonderful spot – highly recommended!) and then headed north up Highway 1 to explore some of our favorite spots along the Pacific coast.

We first headed to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve at Moss Beach – where an amazing grove of trees creates a tunnel that continues to delight.

Next we headed back south down Airport Road to the Princeton harbor area. One of the views from that end of the harbor looks out on this old pier jutting out into the bay. I shot this image with my Fujifilm X100S while standing on the beach. I converted it to monochrome using VSCO Film 04’s Agfa Scala 200 and then applied a touch of Topaz Simplify 4 to smooth out the water and sand just a bit – something I often find helps these kinds of water shots.

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Half Moon Bay Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photoshop CC Textures

Paddleboarders entering the water at Half Moon Bay’s Princeton Harbor

Paddleboarders - Princeton Harbor - 2012

Here’s another image that I’ve had fun adjusting by applying a couple of textures to it. It seems like images like this one – with its big expansive sky – benefit from the use of textures and how they add more visual interest to those areas of the the image.

This image was shot in June 2012 at Half Moon Bay’s Princeton Harbor using my Canon 5D Mark II. My friend Doug Kaye and I were exploring the area that day and stopped by the beach area to check things out. The fog layer was breaking up and – as we were taking some photos – this paddleboarder couple walked by us and into the water.

I added the textures to this image using Photoshop CC and the Adobe Paper Texture Pro panel extension that Russell Brown developed. It includes a number of textures from Flypaper Textures – two of which I used on this image (Villa Adriana and Aquaflore). Both were applied using the Overlay blend mode and had their opacity reduced into the 55-65% range to diminish the effects a bit.

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Half Moon Bay Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Textures

Pelican on the Wing at Half Moon Bay’s Princeton Harbor

On the Wing - Half Moon Bay - 2012

I’ve been playing around again with textures – this time using the new Adobe Paper Texture Pro extension developed by Russell Brown. This extension includes several beautiful textures from Flypaper Textures – and I used two of these in adding texture to this image.

The original image was shot with my Canon 5D Mark II using the EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. It was shot at 200mm @ f/3.2 at 1/6400 sec. The sky was hazy providing a great background for adding textures – but otherwise making for a very boring image!

For this treatment, I added a radial filter in Photoshop CC to create the vignette and then added two layers of Flypaper Textures from the Adobe Paper Texture Pro panel – Muscatel and Apple Blush – both in Overlay blend mode at 100% opacity. I used a layer mask on both layers (picking up the red channel to use for the mask itself) which blocked the textures on the pelican itself. A final sharpening layer was added using high pass sharpening only on the pelican.

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Half Moon Bay Nikon Photography Photography - Nikon D600 Photoshop

The Wonders of Luminosity Masking in Photoshop

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I’m increasingly using the techniques originally pioneered by Tony Kuyper known as “luminosity masking” when editing images in Photoshop. The basic idea behind luminosity masking is to take advantage of the luminosity levels in an image and to use that information to enable much more selective editing of the image.

Imagine, for example, dividing the range of luminosity levels into 10 ranges – from pure which to pure black. Tony’s techniques allow you to easily isolate each of those luminosity ranges so that you can make adjustments to just that portion of an image. Tony’s got some free tutorials on his website and also sells a set of Photoshop actions and a panel that make using his techniques much faster and easier. Along with his stuff, Sean Bagshaw has worked with Tony to create an excellent set of video tutorials that shows how to apply these techniques. Sean’s a great teacher – and the videos are crisp and to the point – also highly recommended!

Here’s an example. Earlier today I visited the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach just north of Half Moon Bay along the great Pacific Coast south of San Francisco. It was a drizzly wet day on the coast today – and that’s what I was hoping for.

The image above is straight out of the camera (a Nikon D600). Using just a few simple steps applying Tony’s actions, I edited the image into the version below. The tonal contrast is so much better – and it’s also a bit sharper thanks to Don Margulis’ excellent Sharpen 2013 actions (part of his Picture Postcard Workflow). I’ve titled the image “Fallen” – if you look closely you’ll see why – and that’s what caught my eye while walking by this morning.

Fallen - Fitzgerald Marine Reserve - 2013

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Black and White Half Moon Bay Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II

A look back at the F/V Josie C aground in Half Moon Bay

Josie C #2 - Half Moon Bay - 2009

In the summer of 2009, something happened to the fishing boat Josie C and she ran aground in the Princeton Harbor at Half Moon Bay.

When I originally processed this image, I used a single image HDR treatment which (as is often the case with HDR newcomers!) was a bit overdone. I recently went back and processed the image again – this time not using HDR but more conventional techniques in Photoshop.

Above is my favorite – the black and white version. Below is the color version from which the black and white was created using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

Josie C #2 - Half Moon Bay - 2009

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Half Moon Bay Nikon Photography Photoshop

Back to Fitzgerald

This morning I headed over the hill to Half Moon Bay – hoping to catch a few shots of the James Johnston House with some puffy clouds in the sky. But my plans were thwarted – the clouds had moved south and the was a Holiday Boutique and Winter Tea underway at the house. So, instead, I headed north up Highway 1 to Moss Beach and Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.

Fitzgerald is one of my favorite spots along this part of the Pacific coast – and I was back with my new Nikon D600 and tripod to see what I could find. As it turned out, there’s a lot of repair work going on in the Reserve. At first I was disappointed but after I walked in further I saw an opportunity for a shot. Unfortunately, being a relative novice with the new camera, I wasn’t able to get a clean HDR image (tripod shake, no cable release, not knowing how to use the self-timer). So, instead, I opted to just post-process one of the single image shots I got as part of a 3 image HDR bracketing sequence.

Here’s that original image:

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

Tonight I processed the image in Photoshop CS6 – applying some of the techniques I’ve learned recently in workshops with Mark Lindsay and Harold Davis – along with some additional explorations that Doug Kaye and I have doing around these workflows. Much of the goal in applying these techniques is to transform a “flat” image into one which has much more depth – helping to focus our eyes on the areas of high interest.

Here’s tonight’s result:

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

Continue reading “Back to Fitzgerald”
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Black and White Half Moon Bay iPhone 4S Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White

A Walk at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

Yesterday, we took a walk through the “tunnel” of trees at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve north of Half Moon Bay. This image was shot using my iPhone 4S and adjusted in Snapseed on the iPhone itself – pretty amazing how you can hold such great photography tools in your hand these days!

Fitzgerald black and white

These trees were planted in the late 1800’s by Juergen Wienke, a German immigrant who named the area “Moss Beach” and opened a hotel in the area.

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Black and White Half Moon Bay Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photoshop

From Capture to Final Image – An Example

IMG 8129

In January, Doug Kaye and I headed out for some photography along the Half Moon Bay coastline. We headed first for the beautiful trees of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve – and, as we were heading back, I shot this image looking down on the beach at Moss Beach. The image above is straight out of the camera – a Canon 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f/2.8L lens. This particular image was shot at 1/800 sec at f/7.1 at a focal length of 135mm.

The final image – after post-processing – is below – titled: : Windswept – Moss Beach – 2012.

Windswept - Moss Beach - 2012

Order a Limited Edition print of this photo

The steps from the original image out of the camera to the final result involved some tweaking first in Lightroom 4 – mostly about alignment – and then exporting the image to PhotoShop CS6 for some tweaking using Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2. In Color Efex, I used the Detail Extractor, Tonal Contrast and Glamour Glow filters to enhance the color image. I then opened it in Silver Efex to convert it to monochrome – and tweaked the brightness, contrast and structure settings to enhanced the layered image effect. A bit of selenium color was added along with a subtle vignette – before saving it and bringing it back into Lightroom.

A few final tweaks in Lightroom included final alignment and cropping, and an additional subtle vignette. I also updated the keyword meta data and added a title/caption.

Hope you enjoy it!

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Black and White Half Moon Bay Lighthouse Monochrome Photography Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II

Point Montara Light Station

Late this afternoon, I headed over to Half Moon Bay – specifically to Montara and the Point Montara Light Station – to join up with a small group of Google+ photographers. I tried several HDR shots – none of which worked very well given the continuous movement in the ocean. But this image grabbed me – primarily because of the vanishing point effect of the clouds merging at the lighthouse.

I shot this with my Canon 5D Mark II on a tripod – using a Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 lens. I shot it at f/11 at 1/50 of a second and post-processed it in PhotoShop CS5 using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 and Color Efex Pro 4 filters. I particularly like the wide tonal contrast around the lighthouse in this image.

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Half Moon Bay HDR Photography Lightroom Nik Software Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photomatix Pro

The Tunnel View at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

Yesterday, Doug Kaye and I headed out on a glorious January morning for some photography shooting over on the coast. We headed first to one of my favorite spots – Fitzgerald Marine Reserve north of Half Moon Bay. This county park has an iconic row of trees that offer a beautiful setting for us photographers. On some mornings, you’ll get fog – on others, a mix of fog and sun. Yesterday we had a glorious bright sun – but with that low sun angle this time of year.

I call this image “Tunnel View” – mimicking the Yosemite shots of that same name. I just love how these trees frame the path – and provide their own tunnel. The sun and shadows add layers to the image.

I shot this with my Canon 5D Mark II with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens – and post-processed it from a single RAW file using Lightroom to export 0/+/-2 exposure JPEGS for processing in Photomatix Pro. I imported that result into Photoshop CS5 and further tweaked the image using Nik’s Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 4 and the amazing Silver Efex Pro 2. I did a final blend in Photoshop before importing back into Lightroom for some final tweaks, noise reduction, a touch of vignette and a bit of love (!).

Hope you enjoy it!