Huntington Beach Pier, Huntington Beach, CA (Jan 24, 2012)

Huntington Beach Pier
(Really, it is 70 and sunny in the winter here!!!!)

     This weekend while skimming through my Facebook page I saw a post by OrangeCounty.com about the recent surf we have had and were going to have this next week.  The post showed images of that mornings surf and talked about how there were going to be 3 swells back to back this week.  I checked out a few of the reports for Tuesday since it is the next day I would have off.  According to the reports it looked like it was going to be nice in size around high tide in the morning and I made a plan to lose a little sleep and make it down there.  It actually was nice and pretty warm for the day following a rainy day in Southern California.  The only thing that disappointed me was that the surfers seem to just be coasting on the waves and not really carving or performing aerials and other maneuvers.  Here are a few of my images captured today.

     To see more of my surf images from today check out the Huntington Beach Surfing, CA (01/24/12) gallery on my smugmug site.

Shoreline Park, Long Beach, CA (Jan 17, 2012)

Shoreline Park, Long Beach, Ca

     I read an entry from the blog Click it Up a Notch where the author discussed New Year photography goals.  The author recommended doing daily projects, weekly projects, or monthly projects including blogging about your images captured in your project.  I, myself have a busy fulltime job with long hours eliminating daily projects so I chose to do weekly projects.  

     I have lived in Long Beach for three and a half years but never have photographed the city.  So today I decided to go down to Shoreline Park and see what I can capture.  One of my favorite subjects is sunsets and water and have always talked about making a trip here.  Pictured above is a panoramic of Shoreline Village, The Queen Mary, and Shoreline Park at sunset.

     I spent about an hour and a half in the park and surrounding areas and waited for the sun to almost completely go away and the beautiful lights of the area to come to life including that of the lighthouse and aquarium as pictured above.

    I plan to come back down here at least a couple times more before I move this spring, hopefully with a wider variety of images.  To see more images from today check out my Shoreline Park, Long Beach, CA (01/17/12) smugmug page. 

Whale Watching (Jan 7th, 2012)

 

A Sea Lion, Two Ships, and a Bunch of Dolphins

      First post on my new blog and of the new year.  After seeing reports online and tv about the different species of whales that are being spotted along our coast in the last four weeks, I decided it would be a fun little adventure for Ashley and I to go whale watching. I was hoping for a bit of luck on this trip and it started off entertaining. Before we even pushed off we spotted one of the harbor residents, a sea lion, posing for the crowd.

     Outside the break water we spotted only one grey whale on the way back into the harbor. We did get to see a lot of bottle nose dolphins which I have never seen before on a whale watching trip.  Usually we only see a bunch of the pacific common dolphin.

     We also saw the ship that was used in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The ship went by the name of The Interceptor in the movie.  The ship in the foreground is the Interceptor from the Pirates film franchise but its real name is the Lady Washington.  The other ship is the Hawaiian Chieftain.

To see more images from this adventure check out Newport Beach Whale Watching (01/07/12) on my smugmug page.