With the arrival of the winter season here on the north coast, I find a change in cloud formations occurring with less heavy overcast and offering magical Pacific Ocean sunsets. As the sun reaches the distant horizon, the light can produce stunning colors skyward, with reflections in any standing water on the beach to match.
I'm fortunate to live within a few minutes of this location, and as I arrived at the parking area on this particular evening, I knew it would deliver another such opportunity. I donned my boots and headed out toward the surf, planning to include some of the beach in the foreground of my photograph. I quickly settled on a camera position that I felt would provide me with lots of options, and planted my tripod in the sand.
I wanted to accentuate the colors in the beach and sky and keep the ocean recognizable, while not dominating the image. I selected my Zeiss Loxia 21mm lens to capture this rendering and accentuate the sunburst. I find this lens delivers great Sunstar results at relatively larger apertures, capturing significant detail with minimal diffraction. This evening’s photo shoot lasted about 11 minutes, with this image occurring around the 5-minute mark. Though the files at both ends of this collection are quite nice, they have very different lighting. This one holds the most stunning color. The large island is Castle Rock Wildlife Management Area, the 2nd largest nesting seabird colony south of Alaska, and is 1/2 mile from the coast.
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Dimitri Vasileiou • Editor