Plastic Camera Waves

Now it's time for some plastic camera fun at the beach! These are photos from our first few days in California. A big storm out at sea made for a foamy ocean in Huntington. The was the first and the last "weather" we've seen since we got here (other than a couple of drizzles of rain). The sun came out and it has, for the most part, stayed out. :)

Photos made with Ultra Wide Slim and RoboCam cameras - on Superia 400 - developed by Alpine.

Balboa, Long Beach, and Huntington

Here are a few photos from some days at a couple of beach towns around us. These are a variety from my Mamiya and Yashica, also developed and processed by Alpine.

These photos are from Balboa, Long Beach, and Huntington. Enjoy!

Zoe, oh Zoe

Zoe, oh Zoe. She loves our balcony. Always sunny, always warm, and lots of things to watch. 

Always, with the big eyes.

Breakfast in our house begins with coffee, and a cat who needs to watch everything. She's just too cute sitting at the bar with her tiny head just barely high enough to see everything I'm doing in the kitchen.

She loves looking out the windows, but she can't reach, so sometimes a chair gets moved over for her. :)
She is the queen of our home, even when she turns her head and blurs my photo. :)

B/W photos were made with a Nikon F100, on Delta 400, and developed by me! 

Square color photo was made with a Yashica 124G on Ektar, developed/processed by Alpine. 

Rectangle color photo was made with a Mamiya 645 on Fuji 400H, also developed/processed by Alpine. 

Alpine Film Lab Tryout

I finally got some of my film developed, so I'll be sharing a few rolls in coming days. This time, I decided to try out a newer lab for the developing. They also do some processing, so I went that route on a few of the rolls. I am so thrilled with the results. They handled a variety of types of film and gave me wonderful results. Their basic developing was great, but their processing really added a level of lovely to my photos. 

Alpine Film Lab is the name of the place, and after the first round of using their service, I highly recommend them. 

Now back to the photos, this is some medium format fun. The square photos were made with my Yashica 124G on one of our first trips to Laguna Beach after we moved here. I went on a film strike while I didn't have a job - it can get expensive. It was pretty rough. I quickly realized that shooting film is a therapeutic hobby. This was the only roll I really shot during that time. And it sat for a few months waiting to get developed. 

The two rectangle photos were made with my Mamiya M645 just a couple of weeks ago. We've gotten into the habit of having a weekly date night at the beach, after my wife finishes her work week. We don't see each other much during those days when she is working nights, so the first night she is home, we run to the beach and have dinner after I get home from work. 

Light Hunting: Laguna Ford

Another little bit of the light hunting... this old truck is parked down by Laguna Beach and catches my eye every time we walk past it. This time, it happened to be dark out, and that big tree behind it caught my eye, too. Slow the shutter waaaaaaay down...

Light Hunting: Laguna Beach

We went to the beach with a different mission this time. My goal was to go light hunting and see what I could find after the sun went down. Night photography has always been one of my very favorite kinds of photography. Finding light where your eye can barely see any. You never quite know what you'll get from scene to scene, but it's always fun try!

It started with a sunset, of course. At this time, there were still people on the beach. A boy and his board. A boy and his dog. Paddle boarders.

My wife and her new toy. Yes, we both got new camera. No, we cannot share. ;)

The sun goes down and darkness starts creeping over everything. Drag the shutter just a little, and the ocean starts slowing down.

We happened to have a moon over the water to enjoy, too.

The reflection of the moon on the water, the motion in the ocean and the clouds... oh, this is a gorgeous thing to photograph.

And on the way back to the lights, my wife posed on the lifeguard stand. ;)

U.S. Open of Surfing 2014

We felt adventurous I suppose. Knowing fully that the US Open of Surfing is a huge crowd of (some rowdy) people, which is not really something I enjoy (at all), we decided to go see what all the fuss was about. It was crowded, but we went on a weekday afternoon, so that seemed to help. I wouldn't want to be on the pier on the weekend of this event, because I'm pretty sure it would start to sway under the weight of the masses. ;)

These guys really did put on a show. It was great to see "pro" surfers throwing out the best moves they could muster on a choppy day in the ocean. 

Enjoy!

Huntington... waves for days...

I think the thing that I find amazing in these photos isn't always the surfers and their moves, but the texture of the ocean and the way the water moves, even frozen in a photograph. The ocean is a beautiful thing.

This guy was fun to watch. He almost always had a "whoa" face on.

A fun thing about this surfing thing is when it looks like the guys are falling, then they somehow switch their momentum and end up still standing on the board. This photo looks like a wipeout is about to happen... nope. He stayed up almost all the way to shore.

Sometimes, they do wipeout though. :)