Pacific Coast Highway - Sonoma County

You've read about the first part of our trip in Sonoma where I did more wine tasting than photography. Here is the continuation of this trip. Once I freed my hand from the wine glass, I was able to manipulate the camera a little more.

Chapter A, Part II: Driving PCH to San Francisco

We woke up from a good night sleep in our Sonoma mansion and we headed west for the coast. Bound by time constraints, we drove straight from Santa Rosa to San Francisco, stopping only for a quick picnic at Duncan's Cove and a few oysters later down the road. I was hoping to get sunset pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge so we had to make sure we arrived there around 6pm.

Duncan's Cove

After eating leftovers at Duncan's Cove, I walked around to take a few shots. It was a bright yet gloomy day so I used a 10-stop ND filter to slow the exposure down to 30 seconds. This smoothen the waves as they are licking the beach. The grey colors in the sky didn't add anything to the pictures so I changed them all to black and white, much like many pictures during my Los Angeles Stroll. Before we headed out, I ran down to the water to make some of those rocky cloudy looking pictures.

Duncan's Cove water clouds

The method for this picture is very similar to the one used previously. The main difference was that I had to set my tripod atop a big rock. When you set your tripod in the sand, the legs aren't as stable. This is especially true when the water comes all the way to your tripod and makes the legs sink in the sand as your picture is being taken. The other advantage of the large rock was that it gave me a higher view point. With this particular shot, being too low wouldn't have shown the rocks and water as well.

After messing around for a bit, it was time to continue our drive south. We stopped in Tomales Bay for Jenna to eat a few oysters at The Marshall Store and once again in the charming city of Bolinas for delicious smoothies at Bobolicious (I sense a pattern).

We finally arrived at the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge where I had hoped for epic sunset shots. And lo and behold, the bridge welcomed us with its usual greatness: freezing cold winds and dense fog.

I see some sun hitting the bridge!

The weather didn't seem like it would budge. I decided against losing my fingers to frostbite so we headed in town for some (more) food: late night Kingdom of Dumpling. We highly recommend this hole in the wall place that has excellent dumplings and much variety. Don't be fooled by the pictures on their menu page (seriously, they are all the same picture...).

Of course on the way to the restaurant, we got stuck in Golden traffic.

Different Golden Gate perspective

I was able to snap this picture of a different perspective. Always look for different angles of what you are shooting. I wasn't necessarily planning this shot but I did have my camera ready and I'm happy I did.

The sunset might not have been what I was hoping for, but I didn't abandon the idea of a good Golden Gate picture nonetheless. That same night I decided to do a little more homework and figure out how to maximize my chances of getting good shots of the bridge at sunrise.

The next: much more photo info, including better pictures, in Chapter A, Part III of the birthday weekend extravaganza.

Pacific Coast Highway

Patrice and Marion decided to come visit me in LA for a couple weeks and since I had 2 days off of work, I cancelled my original plans and organized a 4 day road trip with them. We drove up Pacific Coast Highway early on a Thursday morning all the way to San Francisco, then stay there for a couple nights, drove early Saturday to Yosemite, stayed in beautiful Fresno that same night, then early again for Sequoia and back to LA. Here is a little story of our PCH drive.

We woke up at around 4:20AM on Thursday to beat traffic and try to hit the nice part of PCH with a nice morning light, we were on the road by 6:00AM. We first had the couple usual stops at Morro Bay and Elephant Seal Beach for a few snaps, nothing too impressive. Then we started getting into the interesting part of the windy road. Mandatory stop at Ragged Point Inn to eat great fish for lunch and walk around the beautiful property and their colorful flower collection.

This was an interesting backlit shot where I was trying to get some details in the flower as well as an aura of light around it. I achieved this by using the camera flash as a fill flash, tweaking the exposure to get what I wanted and burning (darken) and dodging (lighten) in post processing to emphasize the plants in the middle.

Back on the road all the way to Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur. This is a little park with the gorgeous McWay waterfall crashes right onto the beach. Extremely photogenic place where I need to find a way to come back at sunset and go down for better angles since taking pictures from the trail is pretty limiting. At that point in time, it was pretty overcast and even drizzling.

I had a little bit of fun with HDR as well and since I couldn’t make one shot look good, I decided to test out some limits and was please with the “paint” style rendering I ended up with.

Here is a close up of the waterfall.

Now let’s FART a little see what we can do…

Much more interesting in my opinion even though a lot more could be done!

After our (very) little hike, we got back on the road and stopped at random view points. One of the places we found was filled with colorful plants and was fun to shoot.

Close up of some cool looking plants.

Premium view point for the flowers (besides traffic, though the car in the shot is voluntary).

Now that's a better point of view.

We kept going and made a few last stops before the nicer part of the road ends.

I still have this urge of driving/riding PCH North of San Francisco as I have been told many many times that it is even more impressive than the Big Sur area. But for now, next stop: San Francisco.

Pacific Coast Highway (preview)

Nice, it's been a while since I didn't drive up that road. Marion and Patrice are here so it's a good excuse to drive up PCH to San Francisco. Always a good drive, even if it rained a little in the middle. Next stops are San Francisco, Yosemite and Sequoia. More pictures coming when I get back.