Highway 101
“Where's your will to be weird?”
― Jim Morrison
Apr, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I think that strange things have some sort of magic this is why I look for odd things or places everywhere I go, wanting to capture all for the world to see it through my eyes. Driving Highway 101 on my way to Santa Cruz, CA I found this amazing looking thing, the graffiti, the strange structure caught my attention. I saw beauty, mystery, weird art so I had to make it part of my collection.Time
Funny thing about it is that I drive to Santa Cruz pretty often, but it took me a while to actually take the time to capture this image.Every time I drove by this place I'd say to myself "I have to take a picture of it!" every single time, but for some reason or another I wouldn't get the chance to do it. Until one night that I finally decided to do it, around the month of April. It was a weekend, I'd say around 8 or 9 pm. The wild thing is that I didn't just capture this thing, something very weird happened that same night. There was this blue light in the sky, I didn't look like a airplane or a meteorite. It was going fairly slow and it was blue, so I got a picture of that too, if you don't believe me check it out on my gallery you will find it there. Moments after I saw all over Facebook that people from other places saw whatever this thing was. I believed it reached all the way LA, that was wild!Lighting
Ok, I will be honest with this. I really wanted to take the picture during the day I had this image in my head of popping out the colors and make the graffiti stand out a bit, but doing it at night gave me a better result of what I wanted. The mystery, the stars, the night, the colors everything just came out perfect. I didn't think of taking it at night would work out so much better. I must admit, I still have the curiosity of going back and take it during the day and use the natural light...Perhaps I will do it and show it to you!Equipment
A car to get me there of course! Tripod,Canon EOS REBEL T5i, the night!Inspiration
As I said before, anything that looks odd to me I have to add it to my collection. Don't get me wrong I love capturing normal things, I believe that everything has beauty. But this was just calling my name, I mean it is just perfect, maybe it's the graffiti that makes the difference. Now, I think about it what would it look like without it? hmm.Editing
I was so happy with the results, I didn't have to do a lot. I just wanted to make it a bit more lighter and highlight the stars, and the graffiti. Popped the color of the sky and balance it so it wouldn't be too dark, too blue, or too light. I don't like to do too much editing to my photos, I really try to leave it as natural as possible only on special occasions when I am trying new things, but not this time.In my camera bag
I don't carry a lot of equipment unless I'm doing a special event. usually a sony mirrorless nex 3,Canon EOS REBEL T5i, Rebel xs, 18-55mm lenses for each of the cameras, MD Rokkor 50mm, 70-300mm lens.Feedback
The best I have to give this time is that thinking about it too much can lead us to nowhere. We overthink too much and we plan too much that at the end things don't come out the way we thought it would. I am not saying don't plan your process, please do! but don't over plan or wait for the "right moment".It's always the right moment to grab your camera and start shooting, who knows, you might end up with a masterpiece!
