Wood’s Cove is a quiet little beach that’s tucked away within a residential neighborhood in Laguna Beach. This location is known best among the local scuba diving community. A buddy of mine who scuba dives showed me how to get here many years ago. I had forgotten about this beach until one evening just recently when I was chasing a beautiful sunset.
I’ve been asked several times before if I stand in the water while shooting photos at the beach. Well, the short answer is yes. Often times I can be seen holding the tripod high above my head as a wave comes crashing against me. Such was the case with this particular photograph. It was high tide, the lower half of my tripod was fully submerged in water, and the waves started piling up closer to shore. Right after I snapped this photo I had to grab my tripod and hold it as high above my head as I could or else the waves would have claimed my entire rig. Needless to say I got thoroughly soaked in the making of this photograph. Thankfully my camera made it out alive but I must have spent over an hour that night cleaning all the sand and salt water off of the tripod.
Wow that is breathtaking. May I ask what setting did you use to achieve this?
Thank you! I used a wide angle lens for this shot with the Aperture set to f/13 for a large depth of field and set the shutter speed to .3 seconds to capture the motion in the water.
I also used a Lee Graduated Neutral Density filter to keep from over exposing the sky. The slow shutter speed allowed me to capture movement in the water and the graduated neutral density filter allowed me to keep the detail in the sky. Hope this helps.