Winter Seascapes – January 2019

San Clement North Beach, January 2019 copyright Douglas Stockdale

Being an old school landscape photographer, I am probably also a bit of a romantic, thus I find that I cannot ignore a potential sublime landscape image when the opportunity arises. While dropping off Ella at the San Clemente train station (yes, the train station is literally right on the beach!), I could not help noting the lyrical storm cloud formation in the distance over the Pacific Ocean. Indeed heavy rain was looming in clear sight.

This storm also created some interesting shore break for the surf, thus I took a number of exposures trying to capture something interesting for the foreground to complete this composition. Since it was an early low light condition and using my mobile phone, there was a slight shutter delay, so I had to anticipate the rolling surf conditions. It did not help that with three small surf sets occurring that I was trying to capture something visually interesting with each one breaks. Just part of the fun playing with chance and serendipity.

So a modern seascape black and white image that I allowed to go full-frame that results from the Samsung S5 capture, versus cropping to a traditional 16×20 format.

I have included the color version below, cropped for Instagram (@douglasstockdale), that I posted earlier today. Slightly different visual effect, perhaps a bit more dramatic cloud and surf combination due to the tighter cropping. The color is a bit off due to the early morning lighting conditions with the pending storm. In Photoshop I found that I can color-correct these colors, but I rather enjoy this strange color combination. With this slightly greenish cast, it also appears to me to be a bit more eerie looking, so a small dash of mystery to change things up.

Cheers!

Doug