Sandy Siegel

May 9, 20205 min read

La Jolla Seascapes (and Abstracts)

I’ve taken two different classes in Night Photography. Before taking these classes, the entire notion of taking photographs in low light seemed totally out of my league. For a person who is easily overwhelmed by math and technology, I can be a pretty formulaic kind of guy. Tell me all the settings, and I’ll give it the ole college try. Well, with Night Photography, there’s no giving all the settings. Long exposures require a lot of trial and error. Every scene offers a new set of challenges, starting with, how to focus in the dark? There are a lot of variables to consider when shooting in low light. I didn’t really understand what noise was until I started shooting at night. There’s a lot to consider. If you are shooting with high apertures to get everything in focus for landscapes, these night scenes can involve relatively long exposures. Digital photography is such a great help in this regard as you can use live view or you can check the jpeg on the back of the camera after the image is taken to check your exposure. If you have a five-minute exposure, or longer, this is a lot of waiting around to home in on the best exposure for a scene. There is a lot of patience involved in this endeavor. I try to shoot all my night photographs with my ISO setting at 100 to reduce the amount of noise in the image. The lower ISO will also increase the length of the exposure.

When Nancy and I planned my first trip to La Jolla a year ago, I had visions of taking these long exposures on the beach. When we arrived at our hotel, I removed my tripod from the suitcase and figured out that the plate that attaches to the camera was broken. I was seriously bummed. No long exposures without the tripod.

Before this current trip, I had my tripod repaired. I also purchased a variable neutral density filter. I had never used one before and thought this would be a great opportunity to do some experimenting. Basically, this filter reduces the amount of light going through the lens. By reducing light, you can increase the amount of time you can shoot longer exposures without overexposing the image. If you are shooting landscapes, your aperture setting is likely high, so more of the scene is in focus. Aperture is a confusing concept, because a high aperture is created with a smaller opening in the lens, i.e., the smaller the opening, the more of the scene is going to be in focus. As the opening is smaller, the amount of light coming in through the lens is also reduced. For shooting long exposures at dusk, this is a good thing if you are trying to create beautiful movement in the water.

I had a few things going for me on the long exposure front. First, as noted in my previous blogs, we were located on the beach facing west with hills behind us to the east. There was an extended amount of time with low light before the sun broke the horizon over the hills. As this was February, the days were shorter; the sun rises later and sets earlier. Finally, as we were coming to California from the east, my biological clock was set three hours earlier. Getting out of bed well before sunrise was no problem at all.

Shooting long exposures at the beach has so much creative potential. La Jolla is beautiful. The rocky beaches and the sandstone cliffs provide some wonderful foreground elements. There’s nothing quite so inspiring as long exposures of waves against the large immovable natural objects. Long exposures flatten waves and make them appear soft. Depending on depth, it can almost make the water look invisible. These images can be beautiful when well composed and executed.

As we were facing east, I was able to capture a full moon set the first morning we were in La Jolla. As the moon sets on the horizon, it takes on a red hue. I’m amazed that it took me most of my life before I first saw a red moon set. City life. Even in the suburbs, it isn’t easy to see anything on a horizon. Horizons usually involve tree lines, buildings, and roofs.

The first two photographs were taken of this moon set. I could barely see the line of clouds on the horizon and was anticipating being able to watch the moon set all the way down on the horizon. Then I saw the moon start to slide behind a line of clouds. My first reaction was disappointment. Then I saw how the clouds were creating an interesting border against the moon. I took a series of photographs of the red moon slipping down behind these clouds. The purple sky and water! You can’t make this stuff up.

The final two images were from a different day. The sun had not yet appeared above the horizon when these images were taken. I enjoy taking photographs of the moon when it is dark enough to capture the features on the moon and yet light enough to be able to see the ground or ocean. That full moon sets happen at dawn is such a convenient natural arrangement. And full moon rises occur near dusk. My telephoto lens goes up to 300mm. To do photographs of the moon justice, you really need greater magnification. I am never totally satisfied with my moon compositions because the moon isn’t large enough. I do crop some of these images to enlarge the moon. I’d buy the 600mm lens today, but the camera store isn’t open, and I’m not allowed out of my house.

When shooting places like La Jolla, it is very easy to get sucked into the grandeur of the place. The big scene is spectacular. In fact, even limiting an image to what is captured with a wide-angle lens feels as though you are being robbed by what is constrained within the frame. There were opportunities, however, when seeing a smaller scene created a different kind of beauty. I see these all the time; probably because they begin to appear as abstracts. To use a baseball analogy, I often think of this view of the world as small ball. If you don’t know from baseball, it’s not worth thinking about. If you do, it will get your head into the right spot for my approach. Finding these small abstract scenes and using long exposures created some wonderful movement in the water across beautiful rock formations.

And then there are all the iconic seascapes that are irresistible at a place like La Jolla.

There are a lot of variables that account for the color of the water. One of them has to do with cloud cover. The first time I visited La Jolla, I saw the water one evening as shimmering silver. It was so silver, in fact, that it looked like tin foil. I couldn’t remember ever seeing anything like it before. We had the perfect cloud cover and light on one of the evenings that turned the water to silver. It is mesmerizing.

The sunsets at the ocean are spectacular. Being able to shoot on all four evenings with long exposures was a wonderful experience. I’ve included four different sets of these images from each of the evenings.