Sunday, September 2, 2012

To The Beach...

So I had the urge to get out and take some photos yesterday. Hearing the news that the waves were huge, I decided to go down to the Huntington Beach pier and try to get some surfing shots. You can sometimes see some world-class surfers there, and shooting from the pier gives you a great vantage point. Well, long story short, the wind was high, the rip tides were strong, and there was not a single surfer to be seen! No exaggeration, none. Nada. There were some boys playing in about 3 feet of water with their surfboards, but that's it. Oh well, managed to take a few photos anyway...



I had to admire the young lady in the photo below. She was trying to get a "crabs eye view" photo on her cell phone! I'm guessing it probably turned out great, and she gets an "A" for creativity!
Further down the pier, they were selling kites and whirligigs. Here's a photo of a whirligig:
A much more interesting photo is created by manually focusing on the beach scene behind the whirligig. Gives kind of a pleasing, abstract effect.
Oh, and I learned something new in Photoshop you might be interested in. You can create your own stylized beach wave. Take a photo...
OK, so definitely not a beach shot, but just for demonstration purposes. Other editing software probably does this too, but in Photoshop, open a photo, click on "Filter", from the drop-down menu, select "Distort", then select "Twirl", and use the slider at the bottom to add the desired amount of twirl.  Here's what it looks like:
Surf's Up!!
Wild, eh?? Your results will vary, depending on the photo you select. If you look closely, you can see my Jeep wheel on the lower right and kind of make out the stretched-out Jeep.
Hope your enjoying a wonderful Labor Day weekend, and that you have time to get out there and take some photos!  Linking with: 
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15 comments:

  1. Love the photoshop beach wave ;)....we don't have any surfing on the west coast of Florida...but they sure would be fun to watch and photograph...love the Jimmy Buffet parrot and 5 o'clock somewhere.

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  2. Really cool wave. We're landlocked, so no surfing around here unless you consider tubing on the lake a form of surfing. lol It's five o'clock somewhere, well a few hours past, but I'm enjoying a glass of wine while reading blogs.
    Rubbish by Roan

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  3. Beach photos??? What, haha. They are nice, sorry to hear though that the surfers bailed on you. I had to laugh out loud when I saw what you had discovered in photoshop, now that's some beach wave, very creative! :-)

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  4. What a fun day! Love the photo of the beach thru the whirl-a-thingy.

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  5. Wow, that swirled image is awesome... neat effect! Thank you for sharing on Weekly Top Shot #46!

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  6. Some great images there. I love your photoshop wave but also like your wave photos. Nice effects.

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  7. Even if the big boys weren't on the waves, I like the little boy photos you took.

    Fun twirly photo -- I do that in Gimp sometimes when I'm making textures.

    Thanks for sharing at YSB this week. xo

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  8. Ahh your trip to the beach produced some really nice shots eventho there were no surfers. Love the whirlygigs, how fun to fly those on the beach. Hope you enjoyed your Labor Day and that you did not labor at all.

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  9. That third shot of the wave is amazing! And the wave effect is super cool!

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  10. Ha ha, I love your stretched out jeep wave, and beach focused whirligig! You are having so much fun with photography and Photoshop, good for you!

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  11. Lovely sunlight on the water and your "Twirl" is great!

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  12. Cool twirl effect! Great beach shots!!! We were at Huntington Beach last year after we left Disneyworld on our family vacation and had a great time. A rockier beach further south though really fit the bill for my group, as they were not interested in swimming but in the beach itself.

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  13. I never played with this style in PS filter. I tried sphere. Thanks for the tip!

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  14. Thanks for visiting and your comments:)

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