Huntington Beach, California
September 9, 2017
18 mm: ISO 200: f/16: 90.0 secs.
When my family planned a last minute weekend trip to Huntington Beach, I did some quick research on photography locations and there was only one location I found that I knew I had to shoot. That was under the famous Huntington Beach Pier.
To see more about why we ended up in Huntington Beach and how we stayed for free at the awesome Hyatt Resort, check out this article. On our second night, we rented bikes from the Hyatt Resort and rode up to the pier. After enjoying a nice ride, a stroll along the pier and some ice cream at Ruby’s, I made the trek through the sand out to the water’s edge to shoot the sunset under the pier.
This was the shot I had envisioned, but it did not come together how I had hoped. For one, the pier was a lot bigger than I expected and the posts were packed so tight, I could not do a straight on shot. I worked to find an angle where I could get the best pattern of the pier posts heading all the way out into the horizon.
Once I had the composition I wanted, the real fun started. In addition to the crowds of tourists walking everywhere, there was a wedding party taking photographs all over under the pier. It made it really frustrating to get a shot without a ton of people. Luckily, I wanted to shoot long exposures to get a surreal misty effect in the water. The waves were not as active as I was hoping, but I put on my Luzid 10 stop ND filter anyway and took a 90 second exposure. That helped get rid of everyone walking through my frame and just left a few people that stayed mostly still. I used the clone stamp in Photoshop to remove them, leaving me with my final image.
Gear Used:
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