Vasquez Rocks

How can I even begin to tell you how wonderful you all are?  Thank you for your wonderful words of encouragement, kind thoughts, and wonderful critiques!  Thank you for all of the stars and hearts!  And thank you for putting City Lights into the Spotlight.  I am overwhelmed with gratitude.  Thank you all!

Once again, my goal was to get to the beach – Ventura, Santa Monica or maybe even Malibu and to take some wonderful seaside photos.  But, it wasn’t to be.  We made it as far as Francisco’s (my 1/16 blip), picked up more strawberries and oranges, then headed back to Valencia.  Both of us were tired and achy, so stopped at our favorite little shopping mall, got some cool drinks, sat and watched the shoppers passing by.  The weather was marvelously warm and inviting.  

After we got back to the RV, I took the pups for a long walk and found J taking an nice late afternoon nap when we got back.  The pups quickly curled up with him, and I escaped with my gear just as the sun was getting low in the sky.  I was out for a blip hunt!  

I knew where I wanted to go, but wasn’t sure about the light when I got there.  Just down the road is a small county park with amazing rock formations called Vasquez Rocks.  I’ve been fascinated with them ever since seeing the outcrops from the freeway.   Vasquez Rocks are part of the San Andreas Fault structure, and because to the fault movement they have become more pronounced over years.  But you may recognize them since several movies and series have been shot at this location, including A Single Man with Colin Firth, as well as episodes of Friends, NCIS  and Roswell.  

I arrived at the park by 4:30pm, found a parking space, packed up my D7100, a 50mm 1.8 lens, an 18-200 mm lens, and my tripod and started hiking towards the main rock formation.   I was also looking forward to giving the 50mm lens a real workout.   ramblerstale  had given me the lens for Christmas but I had only sporadically used it. I knew it was time for me to come out of my comfort zone (my 18-200 mm zoom).  

After a ten minute hike, I set up my tripod, and, using the 50mm lens, took several series of 5 bracketed shots.   It was exciting to realize that my tripod was sitting on top of the San Andreas Fault.  So, any vibration, blurring, etc. isn’t my fault!   I moved several times, taking many series, before changing lenses and duplicating everything I had already shot.  Then, promptly at 4:55, the sheriff came through and told everyone to leave.  And this was at the peak of the sunset!  Groan!  

Once I arrived back at the RV, I loaded the Raw photos, converted them to DNG format, then selected this series of five bracketed shots.  I merged them using HDR Efex within Photoshop, selected the default photo, increased the contrast slightly, then layered the merged photo with a soft light high pass filter.  After flattening the image, I re-opened the image as a Camera Raw file, cropped the edges slightly, and copied the image to .jpeg.    I seriously considered making this a mono shot, but I loved the colors and couldn’t bring myself to do it.  

I hope you enjoy my evening’s effort!  

Once again, thank you all so much!  You are the very best!  Have a wonderful Sunday!