There's something interesting about mixing space, the really big and vast stuff, with much smaller & more mundane occurrences here on earth. That seems to be the main motivation behind this latest series "explorations with space."

Late last night, i started experimenting with stars & water droplets on a photo i took last weekend in Point Lobos, CA. When i took it, I thought it would be great... the waves were crashing, the fog was rolling out to reveal the hills in the distance; everything seemed to line up well enough for me to spend 30 minutes waiting for the perfect wave. On the surface, sure, those things make for a pretty photo. But, it's always good to ask yourself "what sucks about this photo?"

Here's what started to get to me last night:

Lighting

It became apparent after a few hours that the lighting just wasn't... great. The sun wasn't low enough for nice shadows (didn't have time to wait), and it wasn't as diffuse as i would have liked. A few hours earlier, the fog might have fixed that... but i got there when i got there and it wasn't so.

Loud rocks

So many little crevices and reflections and dips in light and contrast make for a lot of noise that ends up competing with the already "loud" crashing wave. My eyes should fall to the wave first, and then the hills in the distance, but instead they trail off and get lost somewhere in the lower third of the photo. I needed a minimal foreground, but didn't have it.

Interestingness (or lack thereof)

The photo seemed to get less interesting the more time i spent on it. If it can't even hold my attention, then it's probably safe to assume it's not going to work. Hell, i didn't even know what to name it other than "south"... yikes. (a fitting name in the context of this post, now that i think of it.)

Lessons learned. Gunna try a flash, a super-bright LED flashlight for hand painting the foreground, and a tripod for the long exposure next time around.