Spring time in California

A couple of weeks ago, we made a day trip to the Northern California coast. We started at Pacifica and then drove South, down Highway 1, to Half Moon Bay. While my family was looking for agates on the beach, I was searching for some nice shots. Since I have photographed in this area many times before, I decided to break out the fish eye lens to try and get a different perspective of this landscape.

The best way to use the fish eye lens is to get REALLY close to your foreground object, to emphasize the object. For this shot, I was basically parked right up against the rock wall to my left.

When we got to Half Moon Bay, we walked out on the pier to see what the fishermen had caught. Since I was teaching my son some shooting techniques, I wanted to find some nice subject matter to shoot. Positioning ourselves on the pier, right where the waves were breaking below us, we were able to capture the beauty and power of the water. I love the lines in the waves.

You know what they say, "the best camera is the one that you have with you...". As we were walking to a restaurant to grab some lunch, I came across this beautiful bush and started shooting images of the flowers. Just as I was framing my first shot, this hummingbird flew over and basically asked to be in the shot. I love these little guys.

Speaking of pretty flowers and good subjects... Towards the end of the day, we were driving back towards our house and passed this amazing field of mustard flowers. It was too good to pass up, so I turned around (with our relatives in their car behind us - probably wondering what the hell I was doing) and grabbed the camera and flash. I asked my niece and her new baby to trek through the field so that I could get this shot of them.

And then Laura, my sister-in-law asked if she could get a picture with her grandson in the same field. Heck yeah!

As requested...here are some notes for those photographers out there. I shot the image of the wave at 1/5000 to freeze the motion of the wave. I shot the image of the hummingbird at 1/800 to freeze the body of the bird, but also show some movement in the wings. For the first image in the mustard, I shot that picture of my niece and her baby at f3.2 to limit the depth of field. I really only wanted them in focus with the flowers in the foreground and background to be out of focus. For the second shot in the mustard, I shot that at f9 to show more of the flowers in focus. All of these images were shot with the Canon 5D Mark II with the 70-200 f2.8 IS lens. And..all images were shot on a Lexar Professional 600x CF card.