Ventura County

• Carl Sagan.

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Today I want to talk a bit about the importance of exploring landscape spots that are close to home. I had a bit of a creative block last year when we moved to Arkansas. Coupled with my wife’s challenging pregnancy and the arrival of the little one, photo trips kind of fell off our priority list. So, I resorted to Going over and cataloging my old shots. This allowed me to take a critical look at what photos worked and what flopped.

While looking at my old shots, I ran into this image, and it’s a seascape that I took on a beach in Malibu. This beach was probably walking or biking distance away from where I lived in LA. But being near some amazing landscape locations meant that these little gems all around us got overlooked. We would often put local exploration in the backburner in favor of a long weekend trip to Big Sur or Joshua Tree NP. While I lived in NH, I did not have access to grandiose vistas like the ones often found on the west coast, but I believe the scarcity of these mega landscapes helped me a lot in developing my skillsets as a nature photographer.

Now Malibu does not exactly lack in beauty, but it’s often busy and crowded, and getting wild landscape shots is a proper challenge. I still remember the day I took this shot; I was thinking of getting some seascape images, and after checking the haze and cloud cover, I realized that we have a rare good day on both fronts. So, we headed out on out checking out some of the beaches that had some rocks in them. I think the tide was supposed to come in by sunset, so I had an excellent chance to get some dreamy surf as well. After a bit of trial and error, we found the perfect beach for the purpose. Because it was somewhat rocky, there were hardly any people on the beach. Seeing this image bought back a lot of memories and a twinge of disappointment, there were hundreds of spots in LA to explore, and we missed quite a bit of them. Hopefully, I will not repeat the same mistake here at the natural state.

• Voltaire

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I made this shot at a small beach somewhere between Santa Monica and Malibu while looking for a location to test my filters for scratches and other defects. This one was made using a lee big stopper and a 3 stop nd grad filter about 2 hours before sunset. Since I live in Los Angles, I often overlook most of the areas nearby and go for the mighty national and state parks that are oh so close to me. So when I set out to get a good seascape image I was also trying to prove that a great location, while awesome to have easy access to, is not necessary to make a good photograph. I think I did good :).

The lighthouse on East Anacapa Island. This remote beacon far from the mainland has an interesting history, which you can read here if you are...

Ventura Pier after sunrise, New years eve 2011, 2 versions taken from the sunrise side, long exposure using a ND filter. (f29, 25 seconds)

The mild tonemapped version.

Inspiration Point, Anacapa Island, Channel Islands National Park, off the California coast. I waited at least 2 hours...