Tahquechi Photography

After a 2 plus month recovery from a foot problem I’m back in action again. School has been taking a lot more time than I had anticipated, but today is finals! I’m planning to go shooting later this week (weather permitting) so keep an eye peeled for some new blog updates!

Since summers coming to an end I figured I would share a couple of shots I took from the beach out in front of the Boardwalk here in Santa Cruz, and take a moment to reflect on the summers shooting and what I learned. This shot of the log ride and ferris wheel was taken at ISO 100, 39mm f8.0 at 1/125sec. It was just at sunset during the “golden hour”.  Its nice when I get a decent exposure and don’t have to do much to it in photoshop

This was a great shooting summer. The 2 big highlights for me was the July 31st class in South San Francisco taught by Joe McNally.  Hes an awesome photographer and a constant source of inspiration for me. I wish that I had the visual acuity to be able to shoot portraits (would help if I could see the subject’s face, not just the big blur heh). Even though hes a Nikon shooter  I still learned so much from his class that I use on a daily basis. The only bad thing was that I tried to get close enough to get a question in during the breaks, but he was soooo mobbed that there was no way I could get close enough.  In August, my wife Carrie and I flew to Colorodo and took a road trip through Wyoming to South Dakota and stayed in the old mining town of Deadwood. I put up a gallery of some of the shots I took while there you can see it at: http://tahquechi.com/gallery.htm The toughest part about traveling is that you don’t have much control over when you get to a location you want to shoot, which meant shooting Devils Tower in the middle of the day in 100 degrees with super blight sun. Though I do have to say that our hosts were VERY accomodating to my photo needs and planned events and arrivals as best they could.

I’m looking forward to fall. I love the leaves turning, the crisp weather and the rain. Its my favorite time of the year. This week I’m working on another Then and Now page, I have a great shot of my grandfather’s car (model A?) taken on a local street here in Santa Cruz. If the morning or evening fog ever gives me a break I can get my shot to go with that one.  By far the toughest part of lining up the historic photos with current ones is finding the spot they were originally taken from (I have his diary, but its not complete and doesn’t cite specific shots just dates and locations.).

This shot was taken at ISO 100, 36mm f9.0 at 1/125sec. Same beach as the  shot above, but facing the other way. This is the first time I have shot this area of the beach and I think it is going to require a couple more trips to get all the shots I want out of there. The foot bridge, and the stretch of land which overlooks the wharf and Boardwalk certainly merit a few more shots without all the fog rolling in.

Hooray!  The tides, clouds and my schedule finally all worked out for a change. I have been working hard to get a decent shot of the arch at Natural Bridges state beach to go along with my last post which had a cool scanned image of the arch taken around 1924.  I tried a few mornings over the last couple weeks, but the sun was either too harsh for a decent shot – or the clouds were too thick and had no interesting shapes behind the arch.  I also went a few times and tried some long exposure shots to get a nice foamy and misty look to the water at the base of the arch, but the tide and the lighting never seemed to jive.  This shot was taken using a 15 second exposure at f22 with my lens set at 34mm.  It was medium high tide at 8 in the evening (thanks rangers for only yelling at me a little for running onto the beach when the park was closing =D).  So the original shot pulled waaaay too blue (and it may still be too blue for my liking) I adjusted the exposure and such, but now the big decision comes… What should I do about the seagull fecies on the top of the arch, and the seaweed on the beach? It would not be too difficult to photoshop it out, but it is nature and if the true reason for doing this project is to show change over time, the broken arch and the fecies do represent change over time from the original shot.  At this point I am leaning towards 2 different versions of the shot, maybe one as is for this project and 1 as an art piece which removes the fecies and the seaweed. What do you think?