Driving south from San Francisco along the California 1 highway is quite an exhilirating journey. After a few hours the road hugs the dramatic coastline as it heads to the Big Sur. There are many parks in this area, and this photo ws taken in the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. The image is of McWay Cove which has an unusual waterfall (surprisingly called McWay Falls) which drops 25m off a cliff to land on the beach.
The falls are unusual in that they land on a sandy beach, but this wasn't always the case. It used to fall directly into the sea until a landslide filled up the cove resulting in the beach you see today.
(Panorama of 9 horizontal images shot in a 3x3 grid)
Sony RX100
Note: I'm changing the way I upload photos! Thus far I've been uploading images in chronological order and have got as far as my trip to Iceland in mid-2009. Since then I've been to many interesting places across 4 continents and I want to try something different. From now on I'll be posting things randomly. If a photo takes my fancy, I'll upload it immediately instead of adding it to a queue.
Since Iceland, I've learnt several different techniques and developed many others. I've also taken to restricting myself to my new point and shoot camera (the excellent Sony RX100 that was used in this image) to see what the added restrictions result in. I hope you like the changes and are looking forward to photos from South Africa, the USA, Morocco, Australia, Croatia, Corsica and many other places!
Tags: square usa california waterfalls seascape cove coast Big Sur United States best decent camera:sony_rx100
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Although a simplification, our sun is pretty much a massive fusion bomb that is so huge that its gravitational force keeps it from exploding fully outwards. This in turn means that the explosion continues on and on as it has for the past several billion years.
Anyway on this particular day my favourite nuclear explosion happened to set onto the calm Pacific Ocean as I watched it from the north side of the Golden Gate in San Francisco. Although the iconic bridge was behind me glowing in evening light, I found this angle with Bonita Cove in the midground, more interesting.
Sony RX100
Tags: Sausalito California United States USA square america San Francisco bay Golden Gate sunset camera:sony_rx100
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After a long day at work, I head out into rush hour hoping to make the trip from Mountain View to the Golden Gate in time for dusk. It was a long, hot and noisy drive, but this only added to the sense of peace, cool and quiet when overlooking the bridge here.
The shadow on the water is cast by the bridge's lights shadowing itself and the strange colours in the clouds are from the city. The shutter was left open for several seconds which leaves these clouds looking like a gentle brushstrokes.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Samyang 14mm f/2.8
Tags: San Francisco california Golden Gate square bridge dusk f:ultrawide waterscape camera:canon_5d2
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After completing a quick visit to the Napa Valley, we decided to drive east into the hills towards Lake Berryessa.
On the way there along CA 128, we spotted some nice views down rivers that drained meandered through the valley and drained the lake in the Pacific Ocean around 100km to the west.
Napa, California, USA, 2013
Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS
Tags: california usa square waterscape river Napa Valley evergreen lens:canon70200f4LIS camera:canon_5d2
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The Mist Trail in Yosemite National Park takes the walker upstream along the Merced River's tumble East towards Yosemite Valley. The walk winds back and fowards past several beautiful waterfalls, culminating at the top of the most impressive one of all, Nevada Fall.
This is the view from as close as I could get to the top of the falls without getting arrested. It shows the view down the valley towards Yosemite Valley and the path along which we walked to get to this awesome view.
Shooting with an ultrawide lens makes things look further away from the camera than they are and so the sound from this spot was a frightening roar of the water tumbling over the edge a very short distance from my feet. In fact, I had to lean forward (carefully) so that the ultrawide lens didn't include my dusty shoes in the photo!
This photo is a composition of two horizontal frames shot in landscape -- one frame pointing 45 degrees downand the other pointing straight towards the horizon. Each of the two frames are composed of three separate photos taken at different exposure settings to capture the large variations in brightness (I was shootingi into the sun).
Yosemite National Park, California, 2013
Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Samyang 14mm f/2.8
Tags: yosemite america california usa waterfall nevada fall f:ultrawide panorama hdr square
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