AIR FURNACE FILTER

On December 21, 2010, my wife, my dog & I cheated death.

You see, I had been wanting to shoot this location for a long time, and since we were traveling south for the holidays, I took off a few extra days for a stop in Big Sur. I planned two nights to photograph the famous sunbeam glow coming through the arch at Pfeiffer Beach... with a splash of water. We chose two cabins that looked good, and since we had our dog with us, we picked the one with more space. As the departure date neared, the weather worsened, but I remained hopeful for a break. When we arrived, the Big Sur River was flooding, and the bridge to our rented cabin was about two inches above the river!

It was just after midnight of our first evening in a very quaint cabin, nestled among the redwoods in the heart of Big Sur, when I heard a terrible noise. I wasn't sleeping well, and as I was laying in bed listening to the rain on the cabin roof, I heard a "CRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCKKK"!

I jumped out of bed.
Then, "BOOOOOOOOOM-CRAAASH"! A large redwood tree had fallen.
I started throwing on my rainclothes, then I heard a man's voice screaming "HELP! HELP! HEEEEEEEEEALPP!"

I grabbed my headlamp from my photo-backpack, and headed outside into the rainy darkness. After my first few steps, I could see that a giant, 5ft diameter redwood tree had fallen through the cabin next to us (the other cabin we considered staying in). A woman was pinned beneath some of the roof, and couldn't feel or move her legs, and her boyfriend was trying to figure out what to do. After 911, a flooded bridge, a volunteer fire department, an ambulance, intense communicating and a lot of waiting, the couple was out of the cabin and headed for the hospital (about 40 minutes away). The woman ended up with fractured pelvis for Xmas.

The tree had fallen directly through their bed, and luckily, they were awake playing Scrabble® at the foot of the bed. If we had booked that cabin instead (and we nearly did), we would have been in that bed, asleep, and killed by the tree. Just a matter of inches saved their lives. Our dog, our timing, and a matter of chance saved our lives. After a sleepless night, we waited for the tree (blocking our exit) to be sawn and cleared, then we left... stunned and shaken up.

I didn't end up doing any photography in Big Sur on that trip. So last weekend, I drove 4hrs to Pfeiffer Beach, and finally was able to shoot the oft-photographed arch... alongside at least 15 other photographers! I'm not used to shooting with crowds, so it was challenging to be limited to such a small range of compositions. For some reason, the mass of photographers ended up shooting quite far away from the subject. I used my longer lens to get a tighter composition, and had a go at the scene.


Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 100-400L @130mm
1/8 second exposure @ F8
No Filters
One exposure at ISO 50

On a recent trip to Montgomery Alabama I finally made a stop at Teasley's Mill to get this shot. I had passed the old historical site many times but was always in a rush. If you travel in Alabama for any time you will find many treasures such as this. It is a perfect location for a portrait session!

I captured the shot with a Nikon D3, 28-70mm f2.8 Nikkor lens, processed it in Capture NX2, Photomatix and used Nik filters to finish the look. I combined 5 bracketed images for this final image.