I love Santa Cruz, the laid back vibe, the funky stores and restaurants, the musicians hanging out on the street corners…It’s a place I can go to just recharge. I could spend hours just watching the waves roll in while listening to the sounds and feeling the sand between my toes. I’ll never get tired of shooting beaches and sea shores, the tones of sand, water and sky, the open horizon. Yeah, this is the life.

Yeah, I’ve been really lazy about writing lately. I’ve been working on the portfolio section, added stuff, changed some things…take a look around. Anyway, this was from a couple weeks back. The weather has been all over the place lately but during that weekend it was beautiful. It was a great weekend to get out to the coast, which was apparently what hundreds of other people thought as well as there was a huge line of cars stretching all the way.

We were driving down Highway 1 looking for any beach that we haven’t been to yet when we came across a row of cars. So of course we had to stop and take a look. There were no signs out there so I’m not really sure where we were. We got out and headed towards the water but as we got closer, we were totally unprepared for the path we had to take. My wife had on a pair of flimsy flip flops and I had like 30lbs of camera gear with me.?

?

This was the path we took down and was actually the easier of the two. It was so steep that we had to grab onto the ropes that were tied onto the drain pipe. Going down was the easy part…

But it was worth all the trouble getting down there. The beach was practically empty, like having your own private beach.?

I really can’t say enough about the 14-24mm. It is just about one of the most perfect lenses I’ve used. I have to be a little more careful with the bulbous front element though. I’ve had a couple scary close calls including one on this trip involving some sharp rocks.

I don’t usually shoot with the 135mm but I was really impressed with the dreamy sort of look that it can give you. I processed the hell out of these pictures with Silver Efex Pro so it is a little hard to tell it’s true quality here. I think I will definitely try to use it a little more often.