This weekend was a good reminder of the importance of being flexible, especially in long exposure photography. I set off Saturday afternoon to photograph Arch Rock in Corona del Mar and to test out a Fujinon XF 60mm I purchased a couple weeks ago. When I got to Corona del Mar, the skies in the area were completely overcast making the conditions less than ideal for shooting long exposures. As I looked out over the water and contemplated heading home, I noticed that the clouds over Newport Beach showed much more promise. So with an hour before sunset, I jumped back into my car and headed towards Newport Beach. As I made my way towards Newport Beach, I thought that the cloudy skies would make a good backdrop for the Balboa Pier. Upon arriving, I abandoned the idea of testing out the XF 60mm and switched to the XF 14mm so I could capture the pier along with all the details in the sky.
Here are three of my favorite long exposure images from a Newport Beach sunset that I nearly missed all together. For all three of these, I used my XF 14mm and Lee Seven5 system which consists of a Big Stopper 3.0 ND and a Soft-Edge 0.9 Grad ND.
90 seconds at f/16
85 seconds at f/8
180 seconds at f/11