Under the Santa Monica Pier in California

“How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you – you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences – like rags and shreds of your very life.” – Katherine Mansfield

Kind of a make shift collection of timber and straps is what it seemed like as my eyes adjusted to the light. In fact, it looked like a never ending patchwork of sorts!

A great place and example of where HDR of High Dynamic range photography is an asset. There was a huge range of light level from the bright California coastal sky to the deep dark shadows of the underbelly of the Santa Monica Pier. Too bad I didn’t clean off the lense of the camera though. Not sure if its a smudge or a flair of sorts thats creating that annoyance on the right side, but I guess it adds a little mystery…..kinda of….a little…..maybe…..

Aaaanyway….

For some reason, I didn’t think this area was going to be worth dragging the whole kit out for, so I left the tripod in the car and headed out with the Nikon D300 and a 28-200 and decided to stroll the pier. In fact, I didn’t really even plan on heading out onto the beach at all. As many times as I have been to Cali, this was the first time that I actually stopped at this pier to see what all the fuss was about. Amazing what’s on top of this thing if you think about it. A ferris wheel, several restaurants, games, cars, people…..lottsa people!

I had a couple of hours until my flight was scheduled to leave, so I decided to head under to see if there was anything worth exploring. Without giving too much thought to the patchwork over my head, (I mean, look at this!), I found a convenient horizontal brace to support the camera to capture this sequence. The exposure range was -4 to 0 to +4 to capture it all……and a steady hand.

More detail shots from here on a later post……

As always, the music is always part of the story for me. I often, as many of you I am sure, like to wander off and explore new places as the cinematic score plays on in the background thru our earbuds…..in essence, creating our own little personal movie.

Here’s is a little clip of some of that music that does it for me. I was listening to this again as I was working on this image tonight.

Enjoy….