Suddenly I Realized...

This was how I spent my mid autumn festival.

Getting Ready for New Adventure

It seems to become a ritual of me to take a photo of my working area before leaving for a new job. This is my office at my current company. It's small, but cozy. Offices like this are not built for engineers any more.

Shooting at an Unnamed Beach

The dynamic range of D800E is truly amazing. Before, I was not able to shoot at this angle because the inside of the sea stack would be too dark and the photo would look flat. With this new capability, it really forces me to look at familiar places with new eyes.  

With a new camera and a new lens, all things I had learned from previous shootings at this place had to be relearned. It's exciting, but the blank page can also be scary.

Davenport Landing

My original plan was to stay at the same place and shoot, but a ranger-like person stopped by and told me I was trespassing, so I had to leave. I guess I will not be standing on this cliff anymore, not an unwelcomed change since I am extremely afraid of height.

Davenport Beach

I hadn't been shooting at Davenport beach for a while because it was a popular place and it was hard to find a composition without including people in it. When I saw that S-shaped waterway, I knew I got to take the photos because it would be gone next week (even the next day).

The Photographer's List

Every photographer has a list, a list of things she wishes she's lucky enough to shoot in her lifetime. The things on my lists are:

• things at night*, and how they look in day time
• the forlorn and forgotten, ghost towns, cemeteries deserted mines, etc
• power plants (especially nuclear), inside of data centers, high tech ruins
• people with their parents, grandparents, in mug shot 
• people at work (all jobs are equal, prostitutes should be next to politicians)
• the Salton Sea 

(I had only started on the first one.)

Some famous photographers' shooting lists (from the book "the ongoing moment", highly recommended):

Robert Frank

a town at night, a parking lot, a supermarket, a highway, the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none, the farmer and his children, a new house and a warped clapboard house, the dictation of taste, the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights, the faces of the leaders, the faces of the followers, gas tanks and post offices and backyards...

 Walker Evans

People, all classes, surrounded by bunches of the new down-and-out.

Automobiles and the automobile landscape.

Architecture, American urban taste, commerce, small scale, large scale, clubs, the city atmosphere, the street smell, the hateful stuff, women's clubs, fake culture, bad education, religion in decay.

the movies.

Evidence of what people of the city read, cat, see for amusement, do for relaxation and not get it.

Sex.

Advertising.

A lot else, you see what I mean.

I once saw Diane Arbus's list in an exhibition. Needless to say it's interesting.

* See Gas Station at Night and Night Wandering

In Cypress Grove

Finally I felt comfortable enough with my D800E to shoot raw. Hadn't been doing any serious shooting for a while, I fumbled with setting up tripod and filter. Luckily there were no other people around, otherwise I would be too embarrassed to take any photo. Unlike last weekend, it was a sunny day, but also very windy, so I stayed as far away from the cliff as possible. In the end, I managed to get close and took a snap of the pier. Only when I reviewed the image at home I realized I should use a ND filter, but at that time I was too afraid to think. 

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

I was about to delete this post draft, then I felt my mood got lifted (it was a pretty cloudy morning) when I looked at these sunny photos so I decided to post it instead. 

Thoughts on D800E

Having used D800E for a few weeks, I can now say this is my favorite Nikon camera (after owning D70, D200, D3X, and D5100), no doubt about it. Not only the image quality is superb. The detail rich image has a look that's closer to a 4x5 Ebony (which I long admire), very artistic. It's also very enjoyable, lighter to carry than my D3X. (Finally I don't feel like I am practicing backpacking every time I go out taking photos.) I find I want to go out more, I want to explore more. I know no matter what kind of weather I am seeing on the coast, I can always count on my D800E to make a few images worth seeing*. To me, that's worth every penny of it.

*Or you can say it's the result of 10 years of practice.    

Landscape in the Fog

Human beings are drawn to warm and dry places. It's in our nature. We like sunset photos. Warm, saturated colors delight us. That's why every landscape photographer knows the best time to take photos is in the magic hour  (the hour around sunset or sunrise). The quality of light during this period gives the richest color of a day.

As a photographer, I am inevitably attracted to the magic hour. My heart sank when I saw a cloudy day. (True, there were subjects I could shoot in a cloudy day, but the longing to see the sun is always strong.) Since I do most of my shooting around Northern California coast, I have to deal with another natural phenomena which blocks sun: fog.

Contrary to the stereotypical sunny California, the California coast, like most coasts, is foggy. (You can tell from the number of lighthouses built along the coastline and the Hollywood horror movies it inspired. Where do you think John Carpenter got the idea for his "the Fog"?) Sometimes, the fogginess is almost incomprehensible. I can't recall how many times while I was driving on a perfect clear and sunny hwy 1 I suddenly entered a different world. Everything blocked. I could only see a few feet ahead of me, and it's all grey. I kept driving yet I realized I was trapped. I didn't know where I was going. The air started to feel wet and cold, even salty. I could still hear the ocean, yet I felt I was wrapped by total silence, a silence that even if you scream nobody will hear you.

(How I managed to drive out of that self directed horror movie I had no idea.)

It took me a long time to consider shooting in foggy weather seriously. Fact is, more than 50% of the time the weather will be like this. If I just walk away and wait for a sunny day, I will be wasting a lot of time. Also life is not always sunny. My vision (in life as in photography) will be seriously flawed if I only look at sunny days. That's what photography teaches me.

Blowing Sand

After shooting this photo, I realized it might not always be possible to change lens on location. Sometimes a second body is just necessary. Should I get another D800?