One Small Pocket at Pelican Point

Welcome to Pelican Point in Crystal Cove Park here in Newport Beach, California. Today's plan is a remarkably simple one. I just want to get outside take some photos. I'm coming off of a somewhat tiring week of work, so I chose not to do a big long epic hike today. Just come somewhere close, somewhere kind of small and confined, and just spend an hour or two out here grabbing some photos. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. I've got a little section of this park here. I've been to Crystal Cove Park before, but never to this little bit of it. This little this Pelican Point section of the park. I have seen some pelicans out there flying around already, so that's pretty exciting. But a little rocky section of shoreline. I like water over rocks. You always get kind of fun little critters and patterns and shapes. There's already some fun stuff in the sand that I'm seeing, and some beautiful striations and patterns in the rocks as well. So I think we're just going to explore the shoreline for a little bit, hour, maybe two, and hopefully find an image or two. And along the way a very overcast day, so we're going to have some flat exposures, no highlights. That's going to be a little tricky on some of this maybe, but the point of today is just to be outside and enjoy it. So I'm going to start on these rocks here behind me. Let's see what I find. My friend's first shot has already found a really simple, just these beautiful sand patterns here. This just kind of looks like these beautiful big flames kind of reaching up and licking along the beach here. This one's fun because it's got a little bit of an interest in this little red rock that's pretty much buried in the sand in the middle of it all, and really pretty. This one's just all about the patterns. Really, really great. Settings are really simple on this. Shooting at an ISO 100, f8, 1.6th of a second. That's it. About two-thirds of a stop underexposed to help that contrast between the dark streaks of the sand and the lighter tan streaks of the sand. There's not a lot of color going on in this, so contrast is going to be kind of key. So a little underexposed, and then I'm sure I'm going to punch that up in post a little bit once I get home, but really simple. I'll show you here what we are looking at through the camera. This is it widening out just a touch. Got that one great rock right there that I really, really like, and then it's just all about these patterns, these licking flames of sand out here along the beach. Really pretty. I got another one over here that I'm going to maybe look at, turn around and look at some rocks, but beautiful start to a day. It's a great way. This is really a great way to spend the day. Get out, get the juices flowing, and get moving. All right, I literally just turned around. This rock in front of me is super cool, so there's no way there's not a shot in here, and I found one so far. I think there's another one up top or beside it. I don't know. I might just walk around this one rock on this beach all day, but this one's just this great little crag. Got two rocks of some interesting color crammed into it. One's just kind of this pale kind of gray with some nice red streaks in it, and the other one is just kind of almost perfectly rectangled little triangle. They're just both tucked in underneath the crevice in this rock, so this is just kind of pattern and color. This one, really nice. Doing a simple focus stack on this, maybe three shots just to be sure I have it. At f16, I probably do, but shooting at an ISO 100 f16, 1 thirteenth of a second. Really straightforward. Just, again, pattern and texture. Here it is on this one beautiful kind of pale rock with a little bit of reds in it and some speckling going on that's really nice, and then this yellow guy up here that's kind of almost perfectly rectangular. That's the one that kind of caught my attention, and then, of course, little snails stuck in the corner, other little pebbles and things, and then this beautiful, just gorgeous curving edges of the sea rock and next to it that all of these rocks are just tucked into. Really simple beach scene. Really pretty. I like it. Starting to get a little bit of sun pop out, so I might start getting a little bit of contrast, maybe some shadows, but I doubt it. We're still very diffused, but this is a nice start to the day. All right, after a little bit of fiddling, I settled on a shot on the top of this rock. This rock's just got really cool patterns in it. There's this beautiful white streaking, I don't know if it's like a quartz or a granite through here, but it's veining this rock really, really heavily, and it is a dark rock, so there's these great patterns that look kind of like lightning in this rock, and that's the shot. Just shooting down on the pattern. Got my 70-200 in there just to fill the frame with this whole thing. Shooting this at an ISO 100, F8, 1 16th of a second. Two shots, one at the top, one at the bottom. I'll probably take another one in the middle of the frame just to make sure I've got it, but I should have this pretty well. Got the sensor plane pretty parallel to the scene at F8. That should give me enough depth of field. It's also a very sharp aperture for this lens. So, fingers crossed everything is sharp. That seems to always be my problem. I always go home, and I'm just a little bit out. So, what I want to do today is check my focus and make sure that I actually have it. So, show you here, though, what I'm looking at through the camera here. Boom. Here it is. Just really, really pretty. Just got these great stripes, and it just looks...it does. It just kind of looks like this lightning strike coming down, and that's...I think what I'm going to probably call this is just lightning strike or something to that effect, but I could not ignore the patterns and the striations in this rock. They're really pretty. Shooting just a little bit underexposed to pop that contrast between the dark rock and the white rock, and again, simple little focus stack just to make sure I've got it all in focus. Really happy with it. Here's a shot I couldn't walk past. I actually can't believe I found it. There's a leaf here on the beach. I'm sure it blew off the flip side here behind me. I don't know what type of leaf this is, but it's these beautiful rusty colors sitting on this red rock with this beautiful white striation through the rock at the top. Shooting this one in a square crop because it's just screaming out to be a square crop. The shot's real simple. 1.3 of a second f8 iso 100. Threw my macro lens on to get detail and close and fill this frame with a leaf, a little bit of rock detail, and that is it. I'll show you here what this one looks like. Here it is. Great, beautiful leaf right here. Love all the texture, little bits of sand on it, little tiny granules of sand on there. Beautiful white striation through the rock there, and then of course you've got the great patterns and curvatures of the rock itself, and then all that texture and color in the leaf. Really nice. Really happy with it. Just as I was packing up to walk over to the big rock, I turned around and boom, there it was at my feet. One more reminder to always look down. Well, I've made it over here to the big rock just in time for the tide to start coming in, which is going to cut off access to get off of this big rock relatively soon, so I'm going to call it a day, but it was a very successful day. I just set out to be simple, stay close and keep things simple, and I did exactly that. I explored one rock outcropping all day for the better part of the day, so I probably spent the majority of today in about a 500 square foot area, and I think I came away with two or three shots that I really like, so very successful day. In my travels between the rock cropping, about 100 yards that way to here, I managed to get two other shots of some colorful leaves on the beach. I didn't get a chance to film any of that because the tide washed those leaves away as soon as I was done, but I'll put those up here at the end. But I want to thank you for coming along with me. If you enjoyed what you saw here, please give it a thumbs up. Subscribe if you'd like to see more and tell your friends because the more the merrier. The channel's growing slowly and I love to see it. And if you enjoyed what you saw here, please head on over to toddhfoto.com. Over there you can see some more of the images I've taken throughout the years, and while you're there, I'd love it if you signed up for my mailing list. As a member of that mailing list, you get early access to my blog posts and the ability to download the image free for one week before I offer it up for sale as a digital download on my website. And if you'd like to get some art to hang up on your walls, I do have a small selection of fine art g clay prints available for sale. But once again, from Pelican Point here in Crystal Cove Park in beautiful California, so long. I'll see you next time. I'll scurry up this cliff before I get stuck out here.