Sunset - King Tide at Half Moon Bay (Part 5)

Several times a year, Half Moon Bay in California has it's mega low tide day. During the mega low tide, the ocean will retreats for a few miles, and land that is usually 5-10 feet under water becomes exposed. On 11-27-2011, it was one of the days. In following days, I will be showing you photos I've taken. Please come back and look!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Today I will mainly be focusing on landscapes. And as a special treat, a preview of some of the sunset photos I will be showing tomorrow. :) I hope you enjoy viewing these shots! Please leave comments! Also please don't forget to "Like" us on Facebook! I added a button to the top of the right-hand sidebar. That way I can notify you whenever more photos are posted. Thanks!

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best photos from this event, use this link. To see all of the photos from this event, use this link. To see my best sunset and night photography shots, use this link.

I decided to post the sunset preview first. Tomorrow I got like 8 more sunset photos. :) So for this picture, just the right amount of orange and blue right?

I hope you enjoy viewing these shots. The land I was standing on is usually underwater, an angle like this is very rare!

Photography Tip: For my sunset photos I post today, I shot them in RAW mode. The key to a good sunset photo is all in the exposure. Low exposure is key to sunsets, but usually when you do sunsets, capturing the moment is the key too, so you don't have much time to mess with the exposure settings to get it "right". Taking the photos in RAW keeps the exposure settings unlocked, this way you can adjust it to a setting you like later on a computer. By shooting in RAW you will always have a good looking sunset. :) The same applies for sunrises.

A photo of kelp. Did not turn out as good as I though.

Was testing out how macro works on my new EOS 7D. Not bad right? LOL

Another landscape shot. See all that kelp? See the rocks in the far back? That is usually underwater, but it was all exposed during the low tide. If Half Moon Bay ever have a low tide like this again, I would recommend you go. They are pretty rare! Only a few times a year.

So many people right? LOL So much kelp too.

More landscape shots.

This island rock thingy. I'm guessing the rock is usually underwater considering how there is kelp growing on there.

Those are mussels on the ground! Lot's of them. And like I said before, they are edible. XD I think I know why I saw so many star fishes there. They got enough food. ROFL

A landscape shot taken after sunset. See the red at the horizon? Beautiful.

I hope you enjoyed viewing today's post! Tomorrow will be the last post on Half Moon Bay, and it will be all sunsets! I hope this has been an experience for all of you as it was to me. Thanks for your time, please share with your friends! Don't forget to "Like" us on Facebook!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

King Tide at Half Moon Bay (Part 3)

Several times a year, Half Moon Bay in California has it's mega low tide day. During the mega low tide, the ocean will retreats for a few miles, and land that is usually 5-10 feet under water becomes exposed. On 11-27-2011, it was one of the days. In following days, I will be showing you photos I've taken. Please come back and look!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Today, I will be focusing on the more small stuff that was there. This includes anemones, mussels, starfish, and kelp. Most of them are macros. Hope you enjoy viewing them! Usually these things are not visible. I did not use Photoshop to touch up any photos here. I tried to use it to remove the glare from the water, but wasn't too sure how. So yeah, these are original. First off, I got a few pictures of a starfish.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best photos from this event, use this link. To see all of the photos from this event, use this link. To see my best wildlife photos, use this link.

Photography Tip: So you see the glare from the water in the image? That can be gotten rid of with a polarizing filter. Polarizing filters help filter light coming in from different angles, which helps get rid of reflections from water, deepen the color of blue skies, and help saturate colors. Polarizing filters are great for taking photos of things underwater (while your above water), and for landscape shots. It is a very handy tool to keep in hand, but shouldn't be kept on your lens at all times. A professional photographer always keeps a number of filters on hand for different effects. The effects can be mimicked in Photoshop, but it's not as good as the real thing.

A purple starfish.

Another close shot. :)

A sea anemone closing up. They close up if you touch them.

Hm... Wonder how the sea snail got there.

There were lot's of anemones in the tide pools. It was really cool.

More anemones and kelp.

Close up shot of the kelp. Don't they look like mini palm trees? LOL

Lot's of mussels. They were further off sure than the anemones and stuff. Oh yeah, they are edible. LOL Ate them before... Collected a few while fishing at Half Moon Bay last time. :P They are really good.

There are more mussel patches at Half Moon Bay, you probably have to go during low tide. The ones at this State beach can't be collected, but you can look elsewhere. I ate them before. LOL

Close up of the mussels. Some of them were really big.

Another close up shot.

Tomorrow I got landscape pictures and pictures of birds. Also this group of Occupy Wall Street protestors I saw on the way there. HAHA Come back and see! The landscapes are great!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

King Tide at Half Moon Bay (Part 2)

Several times a year, Half Moon Bay in California has it's mega low tide day. During the mega low tide, the ocean will retreats for a few miles, and land that is usually 5-10 feet under water becomes exposed. On 11-27-2011, it was one of the days. In following days, I will be showing you photos I've taken. Please come back and look!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Today I got some landscape photos and pictures of the organisms that live in the tide pools. :) I got more coming in the following days. The exposure was adjusted in Photoshop on a few of the photos. Mainly because I got the ISO setting wrong. The day before I tried to take a picture in almost no low light, so ended up over-exposing some of the first few photos I took at Half Moon Bay. You will see that photo I took in the dark on a future post. :) I was driving on a mountain road at night, and saw 2 deers on the side of the road. Stopped to take a picture. It actually turned out well! Make sure you check back! So anyways, let's continue on to the Half Moon Bay photos.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best photos from this event, use this link. To see all of the photos from this event, use this link.

A landscape shot of the pier at Half Moo Bay. Anyways, this was the photo I was talking about, over exposure. I had several more, but I got too lazy to touch up. Mainly because the JPEG's I took was "locked" unlike RAW.

Photography Tip: Like I said above, when in doubt, take in RAW or auto. On professional DSLRs you will usually have a RAW button that temporarily turns on RAW mode for the next picture. RAW will up the photo size by like 2-4 times, but it records the CMOS's data with minimal processing. RAW is sometimes called the "digital negative", because that is pretty much what it is. When your camera converts the photo you took to JPEG, a lot of things are locked like white balance and exposure. In RAW, you can always go back and use a software like Photoshop to correct some things that you didn't get right at the time the picture was taken. So when in doubt, shoot in RAW or auto! RAW can be converted to JPEG later on a computer. Anyways, the sunset pictures I took (I will be posting them at the end) were took in RAW, adjusted then converted to JPEG. They are really wonderful and beautiful! Make sure you check back.

A boy showing me this eel he caught. Nice!

Anemones like this was everywhere. I'm guessing these are anemones... Anyone wanna confirm? Post a comment for me. Please. ROFL

More anemones. They were everywhere!

Landscape shot. See the kelp? That is usually underwater. 

Lot's of sea snails. I wonder if they are edible.

Sea anemone and sea snails.

Generally anemones on the west coast can be touched because they don't have long enough or strong enough stingers to puncture human skin, but they are poisonous to fish and other small ocean organisms. Some more tropical anemones elsewhere can really hurt you! Don't touch those! 

Another picture of an anemone.

This whole area is usually underwater. What an experience! 

Another sea anemone. There were lot's of them.

This kelp palm tree looking thingy. HAHA They were pretty far from the beach itself. Not normally visible. 

I will be posting up more picture tomorrow! So please check back! There will be more landscape pictures and pictures of the organisms in the tide pools including star fishes, anemones, and mussels. At the end, I will also be posting the beautiful sunset pictures I took. Make sure you check back! Bookmark me and spread the blog post with your friends!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

King Tide at Half Moon Bay (Part 1)

Several times a year, Half Moon Bay in California has it's mega low tide day. During the mega low tide, the ocean will retreats for a few miles, and land that is usually 5-10 feet under water becomes exposed. On 11-27-2011, it was one of the days. In following days, I will be showing you photos I've taken. Please come back and look!

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

So, I have decided, I will not be posting the photos in order. Everyday I will be picking around 10 photos I have taken at the Mega Low Tide day. :) I've got around 70 photos I will be posting! So please check back! I got a lot of cool and rare photos! Today, I got some landscape shots, and some pictures of the organisms I found in the tide pools!

Today's photos are original, straight from my Canon EOS 7D. No touch up work what so ever! :)

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best photos from this event, use this link. To see all of the photos from this event, use this link.

Here is a landscape shot! You see the kelp and the rocks? That area is usually underwater. At that time, it was around 3 PM. The lowest tide was around 5-6 PM. You can already see the water retreating.

Another landscape shot. This isn't at the low tide point yet.

There were lot's of baby crabs under rocks. They were so tiny! ^_^ The picture on my preview post and these two were the best ones I took. I actually messed up the other shots with wrong manual adjustments. XD Pretty much shows how much of an amateur I am. ROFL

Another shot of the crab. 

Photography Tip: Alright, a photography tip for you amateurs out there (Okay well I am one too... but... anyways), macro shots like these are usually done at a low aperture. So instead of using auto, put your Mode Dial on either AV or A (depends on the camera you have). This mode tells the camera, you want to control the aperture, the computer can decide on the shutter speed. Now use the adjustment thingy (different on every camera) and turn it down to the lowest aperture it will go. It will show up as x.x/f. make x.x go down as much as you can. That is your f-stop number. The lower the number, the bigger the ring (aperture) in your lens opens up and vise versa. The wider the aperture, the blurrier the background. If the subject blurs up, go up a bit with the f-stop number. The lower the f-stop, the faster the shutter. Great for quick pictures. For landscapes, put your camera on a tripod, and play with the f-stop, usually a higher f-stop will work better. This also slows your shutter speed and put more of the view in focus.

I sea shell I found.

The sun over exposed my shot. 

This is a sea anemone. There were a lot of them! I will be posting up more photos of them in the following days. Surprisingly, the outside isn't much, but the inside is filled with color! If you touch them, they'll dig itself back into the ground. HAHA It's really cool.

Lot's of kelp... HAHA Usually this is all under water. No wonder so many people came to see this. There were way over 10,000 people there!

Another picture of a sea anemone. 

Another landscape shot. You can see the beach in the background. (The part not covered by kelp) That is usually the only land NOT under water. What an experience!

Tomorrow, I will be showing more landscape photos plus photos of the little critters that lives in these tide pools! Stay tuned. In  the following days, I will also be posting some really really nice sunset photos I took.

Part: Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |