The title is from Samuel Rogers, "Pleasures of Memory"
For a tribute to our dear Robert, I had to use the wide angle - my beloved Canon 10-22. This is because Robert MADE me buy this lens, which lives on my camera about half the time. More on that in a minute.
I also wanted to try to incorporate the ocean, since landscapes in LA are kinda hard to come by, and Bear does like to photograph water, too. And he did used to live in the general vicinity, though a couple of hours south.
And I wanted to process it a bit more than I normally would. I learned a LOT about processing from Robert - I've had the distinct honor and pleasure of shooting and processing with him - in person! - twice.
So this is shot with the 10-22, at Dockweiler beach in El Segundo, as the sun began to settle for the day. It is processed as follows (best I can recall):
Rotated slightly to level horizon
Nik Dfine to smooth out the noise
Nik HDR Efex, with the Granny's Attic preset, tweaked by playing with lots of knobs and sliders
Nik Silver Efex - converted to b&w then used the red filter (I think) and a wee bit of a vignette, then applied that layer in luminosity mode (this is a trick I learned from Bear some time ago and I love what it can do! Try it!)
Resized to 1600 pixels, sharpened a duplicate layer using the simple Sharpen option, reduced that layer just a touch, then resized to 800 pixels.
One of the things I learned from Robert that I don't do often enough is to "process the hell out of it" then tweak it back. He often works in tons of layers, turns them on, turns them off, dials them back.
And as for why I have the 10-22: I was working in San Antonio, still in the Air Force, and had a trip up to Boston for business. I told my boss (an Air Force colonel) I was going to take some vacation while I was up there. He asked what I was going to do. I told him I was going to go visit a guy I knew from the internet. There was a pause. He said "You're kidding, right?" Nope. Told him I was going to go meet up with and STAY with some guy I knew from a photography forum on the internet (this was before Facebook, mind you!). He truly thought I was nuts. But after I finished with my business in Boston, I took a bus over to Cape Cod, and Robert picked me up. First stop was in the middle of a marsh, and he promptly proclaimed my 15+ year old K-mart special tripod a "piece of $#)!". It was, but that was beside the point. Anyway, at some point he let me put his 10-22 lens on my camera, and I was hooked. I think he also let me borrow the 100mm, which I eventually got, too. And before I even left to go home, he took me to the camera store he frequented on Cape Cod where I bought an actual, real, heavy duty non-POS tripod. Which now has a ton of sand in its feet, but that's also beside the point.
Had a blast. As anyone who has visited Robert can attest, you eat VERY well when you visit him. You get to see all the gorgeousness that is Cape Cod, and you get post processing lessons. His legendary status is very well deserved.
Hats off to you, Robert! Thanks for all you've done for DPC!!
Outtakes:
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This Bear was unaware that "lustre" could be pluralized, but then he assumes that whoever spells "luster" as "lustre" is a mother-speaker of the shared tongue, so he will cede the point and bask in the lustres (reflected, no less) on this very beguiling image which he just realized he had sorely under-rated and is now bumping from 5 to 7 :-)
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