In the late afternoon the sun began to shine through the trees on the ridge above Bluefish cove giving me some interesting light as the beams hit the sea spume being thrown up from the ocean.

I hiked down to one of the different overlooks and found an area with some nice offshore rocks that added depth to the image I eventually shot focusing on the headland as it jutted out into Carmel Bay leading out towards the rocks and ocean swell. The image was set up with a neutral density filter, a polarizing filter and medium long shutter speed of 5s. I converted to black and white using Silver Efex pro and photoshop.

There is a nice trail system in the park that allows visitors to travel along the ocean cliffs and to visit various beaches and coves hidden around the reserve. If you spend some time exploring there are many small, interesting details to shoot so it’s worth taking your time to look around for macro images of the rocks and sand.

The park is located a few miles south of Carmel and fills up quickly on the weekends. It’s easy to hike into from highway 101 and is open from 8am to 6 or 7pm. Be careful, there’s poison oak everywhere so it’s best to stay close to the trails.

I took this image of a Black Sea Bass in the California Channel Islands. The fish was several hundred pounds and about 5ft long. He swam up to me, gave me time to take a couple of images and then took off at high speed. I was pretty lucky to get as close as I did – I was all alone at about 50ft so he was probably checking me out without feeling too threatened.

The black and white conversion was done with Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro photoshop plugin.

Tozeuma armatum is an inhabitant of the Indo-Pacific Ocean and can be found at dive sites around Indonesia and the Philippines. They live on black coral branches and have evolved to blend into the corals much like a stick-insect on land has evolved to mimic the bark of it’s host.

The shrimp can be found in a rang of colors, white, yellow, orange and have bands along their bodies to break up the coloration. They are 2-3 inches long in most cases and sit on the long fronds of black corals where they feed in the water column.