I took this photo last weekend on a trip to the coast with my son and friends. It was a beautiful sunny day with no fog, and we went all the way north to Fort Ross. I used to go the the California coast a lot back in 2018-2019 for photoraphy and I took quite a few pictures that I still like, but in 2020 I stopped going because of the pandemics and lockdowns. Last weekend we decided to go anyway. We took the usual covid-19 precautions and it was an almost perfect day, only lacking a stop by a café or restaurant on the way back, to warm the soul.

I like the mood of this picture and want to create a few more to complete my series. One thing I have been trying to decide is how am I going to deal with black areas in this type of photograph henceforward. In the California coast, the rocks are often dark, covered with mussels, and for that reason they may appear partly to completely black, even under soft light. Black areas without detail are often frowned upon by photographers and may look funky in print . In this photo, instead of trying to recover the details in the shadows, I used a non-destructive burning method to darken the rocky ridge in the background. Although I like this result better than the more usual alternative of dodging it, how much burn to apply, and where, remains open to investigation.

Location: Fort Ross, Sonoma County, CA, USA;

Equipment: Nikon D750, AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm F2.8G ED, tripod, lee filters (polarizer, 6 stops Neutral Density filter,  1 stop N.D. graduated filter);

Settings: 50 mm, f/22, 3”, ISO 100;

Tips: get there early, particularly in the summertime. Bring a jacket. No cell phone reception on the coast. Use a remote trigger with the filters mentioned above, experiment with different exposures. In post, dodge and burn to bring out your vision.