The first night of the new decade started with a beautiful, glowing sunset. I don't have any photos of it, but the hazy clouds in the sky lit up in vibrant pinks and reds for almost an hour. The clouds didn't clear out until well after moonrise, and I was nervous that if they obscured the moon then it would be too dim to shoot. But by the time I met up with Danny De La Cruz and James Vaughan at the edge of the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, the moon was up, the stars were out.

We began shooting around 10:30pm, with the moon rising out of the East and not fully overhead yet. This meant that the face of the cliffs would still be in darkness for a couple hours. These images are also in chronological  order, so you can see how the shadow moves toward the cliff as the night goes on.




There's a four-story flight of stairs with a few landings on it that goes right down to the water, and that was our main shooting spot. It's a bit scary to me how loud and powerful the waves are, especially in the dead of night.



I updated to Lightroom 2 last month, so I am using this series of images to see how some of the gradients and adjustment brushes work. Each image is processed differently, just so I can get a feel for these new tools. With any luck, you can't see the adjustments and it just looks good.





Almost looks like a sunrise, no? It might fool some people until they realize that the light isn't coming from the bright spot within the frame.



By the end of our session at 1:30am, the moon was now in it's "noontime" position. I'm amazed at how different the first cliff looks with such acute top-lighting.



Can you see the old man with the mustache?

Procedurally, this is so different from shooting live music and that's what I like about it. It forces me to slow down, think about each shot, and try to look into the darkness in front of me and see something other than what's there. If I click the shutter a second too late, I'm not going to miss the shot, so I can experiment with more variables.

On the other hand, the feeling I get is the same, either from shooting a great band or a great cliff. I'm standing right next to somethig special, and I want to let other people see it through my eyes.