Shells #3

Early morning meetings usually mean that I’m shooting something in the evening after my son is asleep.  Easiest to shoot things lying around the house.  We have a lot of shells lying around lately so I just grabbed a couple for tonight’s shoot.

Gizmodo is running a photo contest this week for what you can shoot in complete darkness except for the light of a single candle.  There are no fancy prizes or anything, but I thought I’d try to kill two birds with one stone.  I thought having just one candle might create too contrasty an image so I built a little sweep using some white paper and paper clips.  The white paper served as a nice reflector to fill in some of the areas that would have been in dark shadows otherwise.

I thought I’d add a photo of how I set up my shoot on the kitchen counter.  Of course, when I actually snapped the photos, all the kitchen lights were turned off.

Shell 1

Shell 2

How I set up the shot

Randy’s!

Randy’s Donuts has probably been in more feature films than Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Of course, I don’t have an exact count, but it seems that every other time there is a montage of Los Angeles, Randy’s Donuts is featured.

Today, it is the feature of my 365!  Who doesn’t love a good donut every now and then?!

Randy's Donuts

Araceli and Maribel

The Classic Sprinkle

Yum!!!

Shells #2

The family trip to the tidal pools yesterday was not without its fair share of collecting shells and little bits of sea glass.  Here are a couple shells that we found yesterday.

Shell 1, Perspective 1

Shell 1, Perspective 2

Shell 2, Perspective 1

Shell 2, Perspective 2

Royal Palms State Beach

My family and I met up with my brother’s family to spend an afternoon at the tidal pools at Royal Palms State Beach.  I brought my camera, of course, and was able to nab a couple shots just before the sun went down.

Happy Sunday!

Tidal Pool

White Point

Ballona Creek

At the beginning of February, I had taken a picture of Ballona Creek at Centinela Blvd just after sunset.  It had rained a fair amount in the preceding days so the creek level was decently high compared to what it looks like in the summer months.

Last night, I woke up several times to the sound of rain coming down pretty hard so I figured that the creek was really be going.  At dawn, I drove out to the same spot while the rain was still coming down and captured a few shots to show the speed of the water flowing out to the ocean.  The water slows down significantly as the creek widens as it approaches the ocean.

There is a good amount of debris in this water.  A lot of it washes up on the local beaches.  I’m sure some of it floats out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  There is a great program about the garbage patch called TOXIC: Garbage Island.  You can watch it on VBS.tv.

The Ballona Creek at Centinela Blvd., looking east

The Ballona Creek at Centinela Blvd., looking west

The Ballona Creek at Pacific Ave., looking west

The Ballona Creek at Centinela Blvd., looking west (February 1, 2010)

The Gillis Jetty Revisited

Today, the lighting was so even and lacking contrast that it was difficult to see the horizon clearly.  The sky just blended into the ocean which was sort of cool.  There was a whole lot less debris and seaweed that had washed up onto the beach than the last time I came to photograph this jetty.  Luckily, the weather was a whole lot nicer today too!

The Gillis Jetty, Perspective 1

The Gillis Jetty, Perspective 2

The Gillis Jetty, Perspective 3