Surfing in Leucadia

Mark MacKinnon April 30, 2020

New works

Winter 2020 - Trip to southern California, was just between shows in Florida, to see my Dad 91 who was not doing well. My parents live in Encinitas which is the town I grew up in, after migrating from my birthplace in Phoenix. Fond memories of going to the beaches has always drawn me to shooting the type of work I'm most accustomed to do. I can't spend much time out there on this trip, but always manage to hop down to one of my local spots. The Beacon beach is in Leucadia and you can park ocean front overlooking the ocean from the bluffs. The waves were pretty good today, so I tried shooting from this spot with a 100-400mm, lens on my Sony ar7III digital camera. The parking lot is always buzzing with surfers and activity and a great place to people watch. I never know what Im going to capture,  it's raw SoCal all the way. These people don't seem to work, at least not during the day. Surfers from all ages, surfboards in vans, on top of cars, even coming off bicycles.. I've shot here before, and between La Jolla and Carlsbad, the number of local spots numbers in the dozens. It's home to me, after spending the last 25 years in New York. Once day I may try to return for good, but things have changed so much, it's really not possible. I'm settled down in the Hudson Valley, just about 60 miles north of NYC, and my customer base is mostly on the east coast. Anyway, a quick shoot today, I'll post one of the images I shot from the bluff top. It's actually a composite, I added the surfer in the foreground wave as it was nearing a closeout, to add another dimension to the shot. I decided to turn it into a B/W image and then tone it, since the colors of the day were not all that inspiring. 

 

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