Photo: Marsha J Black
Location: Big Sur Coastline
Our scheduled drive from San Simeon to Monterey, California taking in the Big Sur Coastline, was scheduled for New Year’s Eve morning. Our Christmas gift to ourselves was a leisurely trip up California’s Central Coastline. The late fall and early winter months are the most beautiful. The light is subtle and the weather is either raw and stormy or drop-dead gorgeous. We got lucky. We hit the drop-dead gorgeous window in the weather fronts. We stopped at all of the famous view spots, including this one just north of the Coast Gallery, just before entering the Carmel area.
Challenge:
These are the moody cliffs of paintings and many photographs, with distant hills fading into the background or under the fog. When we were there, the cliffs were also badly back-lit. As is so often the case, we didn’t have the choice of coming back later in the afternoon, so I had to deal with the light as it was.
Accidental Photographer Tip:
I aimed the light meter for the neutral grays in the center of the hills, moving the focal point over about six frames to get what I wanted. This is the only way to deal with this kind of difficult lighting situation. The beauty of digital is that you can delete the ones you don’t want. I shot below the sun line, but still have a few sun spots in the frame, which I will eventually stamp out in photoshop. The clouds cooperated by creating an angled line pointing directly at the cliffs, creating the lead line I wanted. The natural angle of the cliffs is an angle and not a straight line, so that also worked with me. I just had to stand in an area of the parking lot that emphasized the line and showed off the repeating pattern of the hills.
Happy shooting, folks.
This tip is from The Accidental Photographer for the Camera Bag, a guide filled with practical, easy-to-learn tips that can help you take better photos on the go with any camera or smartphone.
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