A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
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20 October 2017
We were shaking our heads. It was the middle of October and again it was too hot to stay in the house, which bakes in the afternoon sun. For several days, we'd been eating dinner outside in the shade of the patio, distracting ourselves from the heat by planning new advances against the ivy growing in a corner of the yard.
An escape was called for but walking was out. And waiting for buses. But we didn't have any desire to sit in traffic surrounded by hot car engines adding to our misery. No, we don't have air conditioning in the car. You don't need it around here -- or, at least, you never used to need it.
So Half Moon Bay was out. And the Bay Trail too. And other places that required a bit of a drive.
What if we just went to another neighborhood? How about shady Golden Gate Park?
So we set off for the cool of the park but found ourselves driving to the western end and leaving the car by the north windmill, whose garden was unfortunately not yet planted (and therefore unphotogenic).
If we had brought along a parasol, you would have thought we'd come from a different century.
But once we were there, the beach beckoned.
Being well-versed in the effects of burning hot sand that clings to your skin as if magnetic, we decided to stay above it all and take a stroll along the recently renovated seawall north toward the Cliff House.
If we had brought along a parasol, you would have thought we'd come from a different century.
The sun was behind us and the tide was going out, leaving a large expanse of beach between the seawall and the breakers.
Not an ideal subject.
We tried to combat that with the 18-200mm Nikkor on our D300. And we addressed the glare on the ocean with a circular polarizer. It was great fun to work the extremes of such a wide focal length range to get just the right composition.
Later, we used the new Lightroom Classic CC to adjust the color balance of our Raw captures, eliminating the slightly warm cast of the polarizer. We had a lot of straightening to do too.
Care cool off with us and take a little stroll along the seawall? Just click on the image above.