I am still processing the photographs from my trip to Monterey for my son’s birthday. The trip took place back in April.
The technique
The FEATURED PHOTOGRAPH, repeated below for convenience, was taken on April 6, 2026, using a Nikon 24–70 mm lens at 70 mm, f/18, 15 seconds, and ISO 100. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and I used both an ND Lee filter and a Lee polarizing filter. I don’t remember how many stops the ND filter provided.
Much of what can be achieved with color and graduated filters can now be replicated in post-processing. However, the effects of neutral density (ND) filters used for long exposures are much harder to reproduce convincingly in post. Doing so would require capturing thousands of individual photographs and then combining and averaging them.
Blurring water, as I did in the FEATURED PHOTOGRAPH, can now also be achieved using smartphone apps through computational photography, specifically a technique called burst stacking and digital image averaging. If you are unfamiliar with the process and curious about how it works, give it a Google search.
I don’t own a smartphone, and I still take pleasure in doing things the old-fashioned way, with my camera, tripod and Lee filters.
The crepuscular rays
A note on composition, the diagonal line created by the rocks leads the viewers’ eye to the the mountains illuminated by the crepuscular rays.
The visible sun rays aren’t actually separate rays being produced in the atmosphere. They’re ordinary sunlight made visible by particles in the air.
- Sunlight travels in essentially straight lines.
- Dust, water droplets, aerosols, smoke, or other tiny particles scatter some of the light.
- When clouds block most of the sunlight, gaps between the clouds create bright shafts of light.
- The contrast between the illuminated shafts and the darker surrounding sky makes the rays visible.
Interestingly, the rays can look as though they converge toward the Sun, even though the light beams are actually nearly parallel. This is a perspective effect, much like railroad tracks appearing to converge in the distance.
I have added the new photo to my project and series “Light Matters”, which is dedicated to the light and how it can transform mundane subjects and landscapes into something special.
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Wall Art landscapes and miscellaneous
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