Work, Play, and a Birthday Beach Cleanup

Elle June 28, 2013

My birthday happened to coincide with a work meeting this year, but since we had a beach cleanup planned for the actual day of my birthday, I decided to take today off instead. After all, doing community service on your birthday? Can't buy karma like that. I might start that as a new tradition, it's a good feeling.

Random side note: today is the first non-holiday vacation day I've taken all year and of course, I racked up 6 missed calls and 7 text messages. No wonder taking vacation stresses me out. Baby steps though, next plan is to take a real vacation somewhere with lots of opportunities to bust out the DSLR.

In the meantime, I still found opportunities to get some practice in after our meetings adjourned for the day and during the beach cleanup.

A cold brew at Karl Strauss

Ringing in my birthday with my signature - Maker's ginger with a lime

A luau evening event wouldn't be complete without dancers!

Seemingly clean beach and yet we still managed to pick up ~60lbs of miscellaneous trash in the course of an hour and half. Pick up your crap, people!

Birds

Sandy cliffs, subject to water and wind.

Hours to Date: 15

Half Day Friday: Beach, Beer & BBQ

Elle June 1, 2013

One of the many perks of my job is the ability to take half days on alternate Fridays during the summer, and yesterday, we used it as a reason to throw a going away BBQ for a guy who's going back to school. I'm pretty sure there is no better way to ring in the summer than with a BBQ at the beach, which I then rounded out with happy hour with a friend who happens to live in San Diego.

The only casualty I incurred was some sunburn because I forgot to reapply sunscreen amidst moving around trying to take quality photos and make up for yesterday's laziness.

Still, despite the potential sunglasses-tan-induced raccoon eyes, added some time to this week and took some action shots instead of still subjects. Photographing moving things reminds me a lot of skeet shooting... you follow the movement and then pull the trigger at the apex - in this case, once the subject gets into an interesting or visually striking position in the frame. With the pier that juts into the water near the surfing area, I was at a pretty good angle to catch some surfers doing their thing.

But first, an homage to BBQ, which I'm pretty sure should just be its own food group entirely.

Chicken & hot links: yum, yum, and more yum!

Fall-off-the-bone ribs.

Surfer, f/8 @ 1/500s, with the colors punched up a little in Picasa because the light was kind of bleh

Just about to lose his balance - I love the reflection of his shadow in the water.

Fat pigeon that bullied 2 other pigeons out of the way for this perch - what an asshole. Nikon D3100 f/5.6 @ 1/640s.

Pier, as seen from the beach

If only life decisions were this simple - colors punched up in Picasa

Hours to Date: 8

Lazy Photography is No Bueno

Elle May 30, 2013

I was a lazy photographer today.

I used all my energy, productivity, and willpower on getting up early after a night of insomnia, getting to work early, and then convincing my tired self to follow through with my plan to play pickup beach volleyball after work anyway.

I brought the camera along just because I thought I could get some time in before and after, but it ended up an afterthought once I got to the beach and I sat down with my feet dangling off the boardwalk in the sand. All the interesting subjects were far away and all I wanted to do was sit. Especially given the fact that I was about to run around chasing down errant balls all over the beach, I had no desire to move around and think artsy fartsy.

The light also wasn't quite right since it was still roughly 2 hours to sunset and overcast... and 30 minutes and several haphazard shots later, I ended up with utter mediocrity.

But hey, at least I got in a great workout.

Hours to Date: 6.5