There's Still Hope

This photo outing was encouraging for a number of reasons.

First, the EF-S 17-55mm proved once again to be a fantastic lens, and I'm really pleased with how big of a difference it's making in the sharpness of my images.

Second, it was pretty painless to edit, and only took me about 30 minutes of tinkering, so I'm definitely building confidence there.

Finally, I dragged the whole family with me, including the ~2 year old and the ~2 month old, and it wasn't impossible to make that happen. We piled in the car just before sunset, drove up the road a bit, and spent about a half hour at the beach, and nobody was too upset about it.

Basically, I was able to pull together an image that I'm really excited about without having to make a huge investment. It was reassuring to see that there's still hope for me in this hobby, even with two young kids and precious little free time! :)

Isla Vista Steps

This photo was taken last December on one of my all-time-favorite photo outings.

Isla Vista is a tiny town which is home to most of the college students attending UC Santa Barbara. The town butts right up against some small cliffs along the ocean. When the tide's at its peak, the beach along IV is completely submerged, and the waves crash against the cliffs. On one end of the town are these steps which lead down to the beach and are submerged at very high tide.

It had been raining for days, and was supposed to keep raining that morning. Packing the night before, I grabbed a rain coat and an umbrella in case it was still going. The clouds broke, though, and made for quite the sunrise.

We had recently purchased a Flip video camera, and I took it along to share the experience a little bit. Check out the video below.