Crystal Cove — project blog — 10,000 Hours Photography

I'm frustrated that I'm encumbered by my back/shoulder/neck pain - I really want to go on another hike in search of altitude to experiment with my new wide angle lens, but I get too sore after just a few hours of plain vanilla walking. Fortunately, I have a physical therapy appointment scheduled and I don't even care what kind of sadistic stretches or exercise they may impose, I just want to go back to normal.

In any case, we went to breakfast on the beach and then walked along the tide pools before it got too hot - basically the same easy excursion as this one a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, our efforts at timing to arrive with low tide were foiled by some kind of storm surge that sent waves crashing up to what is normally the high tide line. My boyfriend had a waterproof point & shoot on hand, but I wasn't willing to risk my DSLR to get much closer to the water than I did. I am excited that he's totally gotten sucked into my photography hobby and basically going to take my D3100 body off my hands so I can upgrade to a D3300 without feeling too guilty over a purchase I don't need, but would love, given the 5 FPS (frames per second) multi-shot capability (vs. 3 FPS on the D3100) and the panorama mode.

In any case, the shots I took didn't really made me feel like I used the wide angle well - part of that is due to the fact that I shot in kind of bright mid-morning light and corrected in post by tweaking the lighting & saturation, but more experimentation and practice is clearly needed.

The waves from the surge were huge & the low tide only intensified the effect

Crash

Crash II

More Waves

Active Shooting Hours: 1.5 hours

Review Hours: 2 hours

Hours to Date: 165 hours

"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again" - John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Philosophically profound, but not very practical... take your eyes off the waves for a few seconds and next thing you know, you and your fancy (but not impervious) camera are soaked. Since tide pools exist where rocky outcroppings trap water, to explore them and their contents properly, you have to clamber up wet and slimy rocks covered in sharp mollusks. One miscalculated step or a particularly large wave and you're cold, wet, and potentially injured if you sprain an ankle or cut yourself on a sharp edge. I also did not have great footwear for this trek - flip flops, the only "shoes" I had in my collection that I was willing to get sandy and wet. You could definitely pick apart the casual visitors from the frequent tide pool explorers... they were all properly shod with what I will call "hiking sandals" or just straight up hiking boots. And after 3 hours of trying to maintain my balance on rocks in flip flops, small muscles in my feet are definitely making their presence known.

I really wonder how professional nature photographers (a la National Geographic) manage to get such amazing shots. Wildlife generally are not very cooperative in holding interesting poses and when you move to compose a shot, they move away. Additionally, timing for natural light and ideal conditions is a truly an exercise in tactical planning. I've been wanting to photograph tide pools for almost a month now, but it took until today to hit the quadfecta of low tide, indirect light, not a million degrees out, and minimal traffic and people to get in my way. And to manage that, I still had to set my alarm for 5am on a Saturday to get there by low tide at 6:53am. Alternatively, I could have waited until 7:24pm, but there definitely would have been more people and low tide at that point would have been at 2.2' instead of the 0.6' it was this morning and I probably would have seen less with more of the shore being covered in water.

All in all, still totally worth it. Tide pools are so fascinating - temporal biospheres with flora and fauna that are exposed during low tide. These organisms have to be hardy to withstand the pounding surf, exposure to the sun, and hungry predators for extended periods of the day. Crystal Cove also had some volunteer docents who were able to tell me more about the plants and animals, which was an unexpected bonus to my morning. They were surprised I knew a lot more about tide pools than the typical layperson, but I credit that to a marine biology class I happened to take as an undergrad and multiple visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium when I lived up in NorCal.