Bowling Ball Beach

What: Bowling Ball Beach, Point Arena in California. Ever since I heard about this place, I want to drive there one beautiful partly cloudy weekend sunset for a another shoot to my collection. But life's been busy, no one want to come along and keep me company or enjoy the shoot with me. oh well, everyone has their busy life.... not me, at least for the next few years.

I wanted to go so bad after seeing this. It's really that popular? gotta have it. Doesn't matter who come or not. No? I'm on my own, no problem. Last time I remember by myself, I got a really nice afternoon and got something nice as well.

Where/when:
Learning from last trip to Crater Lake and come back by 3am, I don't want to do any long trip on Sun. But this weekend is an exception ;). Sat was cloudy. Only Sun is good enough for a nice sunset. So I decided to head there around 2pm from North Bayarea. On the way, I stopped by Point Bonita Lighthouse again hoping I'm on time this route. The horrible traffic did not help at all. So I started to leave Golden Gate area around 3:40pm. Expected to be driving another 2 hr or so since google map said it's a 3 hr drive. Once I left 101 and get on Hwy 1, I found out it's not going to be a short drive. The street itself is nowhere to be complained about. It's a beautiful drive if it's Sat and you have the whole day with a convertible. I'm driving on late Sun afternoon in my compact sedan... Wanted to enjoy
the beautiful view but I'll be late for sunset which will be totally suck. Btw, it's a good 4+ hr drive, I timed on my way back. It's as far as from San Jose to Yosemite. Oh and not reconmend to bring anyone with motion sickness problem...;) it's gonna be a really really long drive. Anyway, I got there close to 7pm. Started to hike down the beach and got confused a little bc the beach area is separated with bowling beach area by a cliff. I got all excited and decided to climb across this cliff. I had ti head back when I couldn't go any further bc the cliff comes so far out in the water. Headed back to this trail, there was a split off of the trail heading to a restroom area. I followed this path, up a little, there was a tiny trail straight up follow that all the way until I see some wooden steps, follow by
wooden ladder. Got down to the sandy beach and walked for another few hundred ft all excited is the
bowling beach area.
As usual, I had flipflop to the beach here. Bad idea, it doesn't really matter what you wear; the area is all rocks covered with moss and algae. Be extremely careful walking in this area. You will slip and fall with you camera using shoe or a little better barefoot and get all kind of cut at the end. I picked option 2 and got a few cuts.

How:

So I left my complete backpack there bringing with me down to the rocks area my D700, Nikkor 16-35mm, 24-120mm (did not use this lens at all), B + W 1000x filter, Cokin ND8 and of course the wired
trigger.
And this is what I got.

Shutter speed: 1/15s
Aperture : F/11
Focal Length: 20mm
ISO 100

The rest of these are HDR from 7 exposure, then top off with another layer in PS to reduce the HDR look. (I don't like serious HDR too much but like how it's cover all color range)

Last but not least, my favorite in this set...