S.S. Palo Alto

What: S.S Palo Alto, the most famous concrete ship of the West Coast. Built in 1919 By San Francisco Shipbuilding Company in Oakland, California. The concrete ship was later purchased by an Seacliff Amusement Company of Nevada and towed to Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, California. An arcade, dining room, dance hall and even a swimming pool were built on the ship. Unfortunately, the Seacliff Amusement Company went out of business two years later under the financial crunch of the Great Depression. Then, in winter, a storm cracked the ship across her midsection. The Palo Alto was stripped of all salvagable metal and fixtures and turned into a fishing pier.

When: So I've been browsing Flickr and Flickriver a lot to find my next photoshoot location. And one of the best in this region, I gotta bring Jim Patterson into the picture. He has an amazing collection on Flickr. So I was browsing through and found this concrete ship. The color, the story, the age of this ship make me want to get there and capture it right away. Been busy, so I put it off and off until late summer 2010. It's been cloudy every morning all summer in the bay area. So I kept checking weather forecast in Santa Cruz area. I also search for live webcam there for better view of the weather condition. Kinda found AHA moment one day and drove there straight after work.

Where/How: Traveled on HWY 17 toward Santa Cruz, take South HWY 1 toward Capitola for about 5 miles. Then take State Park Dr. toward Seacliff State Beach. If you want to support State park, drive straight, pay $10 parking fee, and drive down all the way to the pier. If not, just before the park entrance, make a Left onto Santa Cruz Ave, then right on Broadway and park at the corner of Broadway and Seacliff Dr. It's street parking. Walk toward the beach you would see really really long stair down to the beach. The S.S. Palo Alto is right there.

So I got there about 7:30pm when sunset at 8:30 pm . I've been in so many situation where I have 10-15 min until sunset and I don't have the right gear to do anything thing. This time, I have 1 hr extra, the whole complete backpack with Nikon D700, and all my lens but I only used Nikon 16-35mm. Kinda used 24-105mm a little bit but didn't really need to. Got to the end of the pier, set up my tripod and frame ready for sunset. Did some practice shoots and find out it looks plain at eyes level (about 5ish ft.). So I had my tripod fully extended to about 7'. Now it's aproblem. I cannot see the frame. I can't change settings. And the gate has about 3.5-4in gap between bars so I have very little room to move my lens side to side when it's between bars. So I tried many many times to get the right ones. Everytime I want to view, I have to pull camera and lens back out from the bars which totally change my frame .

Nikon D700
Nikon 16-35mm

In this shoot, I also had B&W 1000x density.

Focal Length: 16mm
Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 8sec
ISO 400



This one is combined of 5 shot and HDR using photomatix. I almost always do HDR but not to an extend that it looks not real anymore. This is another try :)