LA 2013 Santa Monica

Ok this is the last in the series.  This is also the one in which my daughter liked the most.  The Santa Monica pier at low tide.  She had so much fun running around under the pier finding tide pool life, it was hard for one of the other parents to keep up.

I guess the stars of the show, pun intended, where the star fish.  They where everywhere and this was also the problem.  I saw too many starfish being carried away as trophies.  This first guy was fun to watch and after about 20 minutes and the number of people increasing, I had my daughter moving him closer to the tide line to give him a fighting chance to escape from being a trophy.



Here are a couple of macro shots.  (Having to try my macro lens.)



And the sunset.



And finally the pier.  I really need a light tripod to travel with.

Horse Camp

Just spent an few days with my daughter while she was attending a mini horse camp.  She certainly learned a lot about caring for horses and not just riding.  All the kids had to share in the responsibility of feeding and watering the horse.  Anyway, I had a little time to play with the camera also.  Since I like panoramics, it is not surprising that I created one.  This time I did something a little different and used both my 28-300 and my 14-24.  This being a DX camera, the 28 is really 42 and the 14 is 28.  What surprised me was how different each turned out.  (I guess after looking and thinking about it, it is not that surprising.)

Here is the 28.

And here is the 14.

Both created with Hugin and shot from the same location.  I did like using the 14 better since it allowed me to capture more of the sky.  The 28 sometimes does not allow enough overlap to be included in the show.  (Also I tend not to have the 14 with me when I see something I was to do a panoramic of.)

The next is a couple of nice sunset shots from the second to the last night at camp.

And here is the parting shot as the kids ride off on one of the last rides.  (My daughter actually is the least experience of the group and this was an easier ride, but all the same she enjoyed it a lot.)

Pt Arena Lighthouse

Here are a couple of time lapse sequences that I shot at the Pt Arena Lighthouse.  I was hoping the sunset would do a little more than it did but I did learn that small changes in setup distance can mean a lot.

This first one I missed getting the sun directly through the top of the lighthouse by about 2 minutes and 5 feet.  I noticed that the sun could be positioned in the light house window and changed my setup to catch it.  The sun was still about above the lighthouse at the time, but in the 2 minutes it took to reposition and realign, it was just below the top of the window.

This next one is basically a continuation.  I noticed that the sun would actually set behind the brush in the foreground, thus I wanted to move quickly to a new location.  I moved about 20 feet to the left, a spot where I hoped put the sun on the horizon right between the lighthouse and brush.  As you will see, I just missed and the sun set right behind the corner of the brush.  (If I had moved just 3 more feet to the left, I would have had a clear shot.)  Again, timing and setup needed to be a lot more precise then I had thought.