Seeking out the epic sunset …

Last Friday night was perhaps the most epic sunset I’ve ever seen.  Middle Dude and I watched it, completely mesmerized, from our front yard.  I might have kicked myself a few hundred times for NOT being at the beach at that moment.  Regret aside, I determined to be at the beach Saturday night, just in case it happened again (which it didn’t. boohiss. marine layer. boohiss)  Anywhooo, these yahoos below did not choose to come along with me.  They stayed back at Chez-Papa-Nana. So I set off with my tripod (something I rarely use) and my 50mm lens (notoriously NOT my favorite lens) and a determination to catch the sunset and play around with some long exposures. (on my bucket purchase list is a multi-stop neutral density filter & a graduated ND filter)  I also changed things up and put my camera in [medium] RAW mode, because I knew I also wanted to experiment with some new editing tricks.  (I’ve been watching Jinky’s editing videos – which are amazing, btw – and I wanted to bling-up some sky detail) The pelican parade … Tons of surfers … And all those clouds at the horizon are about to close in on each other before the sun dips below them… [sniff sniff] Below is my first attempt with longer exposure.  It was still quite a bit too light to attempt this without a filter, but I closed my aperture down to f/22 to get a 1/25 second exposure. It wasn’t the epic sunset that I was hoping would put on an encore presentation, but it was still a pretty nice place to hang out for awhile …