SpringFest in the Custom House Plaza

The lovely Spring weather we all love has returned and so I am back outside, exhibiting my photos as much as I can.  This weekend I’m excited to be participating in SpringFest in the Custom House Plaza in Monterey.  The Plaza has been a great venue for me in the past and I’m really looking forward to being back there and showing off my photography.

Brand New Booth

Another reason I’m looking forward to SpringFest this weekend is that it will be my first show with my new booth display.  I’ve spent the past two weeks hammering, drilling, and sawing to create a brand new set of display panels designed to highlight my work and create a “sanctuary of space” in which to view my photos, and now I am eager to put them to the test!  So come on out to The Custom House Plaza this weekend in Monterey to say hello, check out the new display, and look at all the new photos I’ve added to my portfolio since I was last in Monterey.

10% Off All Prints

As always, here’s a 10% off coupon available only to my fans and supporters.  Just print it out and bring it to the show to save 10% on any of my prints.

Take care, and hope to see you at the show!

Josh
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http://www.joshuacripps.com
209.728.7982

p.s. can’t make it to this show?  check out my events calendar to see what else i’ve got coming up

Last week I called up my friend and fellow photographer Jim Patterson to see if he felt like going shooting. I didn’t have whatfor in mind, so Jim suggested a place called Pebble Beach near Pescadero. We cruised up the coast, being buffeted by high winds the whole way. We got to the beach, and hopped out of the truck to scope out conditions, and that’s when we began doin’ the Panther Beach shuffle.

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Click the image for a larger version to see all the neat detail in the clouds and water

Boy, I must be a glutton for punishment for tonight I shot at Hole in the Wall Beach at high tide. The last time I did that, I had a serious accident. So how the heck did I find myself there again under similar conditions? Well . . .

A passing storm brought the promise of drama to our sunny shores here in Santa Cruz for the first time in about a week. The clear skies, along with the fact the my car has been in the shop, kept me from shooting for the longest time in a while: going on 9 days. NINE!! Yikes!

Anyway, got my car back from the shop and saw a whole world of intriguing clouds out over the ocean; nothing was going to keep me inside tonight. I checked the tide levels and saw that they were fairly high, which more or less ruled out Hole in the Wall Beach, aka my favorite place in the whole area. But somehow I still found myself pulling into the parking lot if only to “check it out.”

I tromped on down to the beach and saw that there was quite a lot of sand piled up since my last visit, which made the arch much easier to pass through. It was still a race against the waves back up around the side of the cliffs but a fair bit of sprinting, hooting, and hollering kept me ahead of the salt water.

I wasn’t sure where the best conditions for sunset would be so I clambered up onto the rocks at the south end of the beach where there are a million and one things to shoot. And boy did I have a frikkin’ field day out there.

The lighting conditions were constantly changing and I shot composition after composition. I almost filled up my memory card, which is something I never do any more. Towards the end of the evening I was shooting a massive storm cell ruddily illuminated by the sun’s last rays when a sneaker wave ricocheted off of a rock 40 feet in front of me and somehow flew backwards through the air to land entirely on my chest.

Ahh, sigh. It isn’t a night at Hole in the Wall if you don’t come home soaking wet.

Should be lots of sweet shots to share here over the next few days. Thanks for looking!

~Josh

Early April was an incredibly rainy time here in Santa Cruz.  April 2nd was one of those days so rainy I didn’t even bother to check the conditions for sunset because of the steady downpour. Around 6:45 pm though, I heard something: Silence. All of a sudden it was too quiet! I looked outside and sure enough, the rain had stopped.  And what’s more, the clouds were breaking up and some glow was beginning.  So I really quickly threw my camera gear in my bag, hopped in the car, and jetted down to Natural Bridges, arriving just as the setting sun threw some lovely pastel colors out onto the tail end of the storm clouds.

So far since moving to Santa Cruz I’ve been avoiding Natural Bridges simply because it is such a highly-photographed beach.  But lately I’ve been wanting to add a Natural Bridges shot to my portfolio and this night ended up being a perfect opportunity since NB is the beach closest to my house and I didn’t have time to get anywhere else.  When I got down to the beach, I found a mid-level tide which kept me pretty far from the classic arch.  But that ended up being just fine since backing way off was the only way I could get the arch and the sky color in the same shot.  I loved the way the arch looked against the long exposure waves and I think I might have an infatuation brewing with that.  Now I just need another night with a nice sunset and a bit of a lower tide.  Can’t wait!

~Josh

The silver lining to an otherwise crummy day

I spent the past weekend at an outdoor art show in Pacific Grove, CA. Well, that’s not really true; I spent last Saturday at the show. Sunday was unofficially canceled due to intense downpours and fierce winds. But even Saturday was not without weather problems. Cloudy, cold, and gusty: those were the conditions, and they did not make for a terribly enjoyable show. Attendance was low and sales were slow. Some vendors even lost money because their merchandise blew over and broke. Around four in the afternoon the promoter came by and said that an emergency storm warning had been issued and that Pacific Grove could expect 40-50 mph winds overnight. 40 to 50 mph?!?! Goodbye canopy! That’s when I decided to pack it in and not worry about coming back the next day.

But all that disappointment did come with a silver lining: got to meet up with a friend of mine and go out to dinner. After food we cruised down to Asilomar Beach for a very quick shoot as the setting sun just barely sent some light peeking over the incoming storm.

After previously complaining about how hard I found composing in Asilomar, I’m happy to say that this composition jumped right out at me as soon as we hit the beach. And how nice it was to be shooting light-colored rocks, rather than the dark-as-night stuff we have in Santa Cruz. Made the exposure a bit easier to manage.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the result and the silver lining it brought to an otherwise disappointing day.

~Josh

Many people might assume that photographers are extremely lucky because somehow we’re always in the right place at the right time.  But the truth is that luck rarely has anything to do with.  Rather, great photographs are often forged out of planning, understanding, patience, and diligence.  Such was the case for a recent shot I took near Santa Cruz:

There’s this fantastic shelf just north of Four Mile Beach in Santa Cruz, and on this shelf is this cool, pseudo-seastack.  And when the tide is right the waves come in, crash against the rocks and send jets of foamy wash around the pseudo-stack to cascade back into the ocean.  It’s pretty excellent to watch.

I’ve been trying to get a good shot of this phenomenon for awhile now – ever since I found this shelf in the first place.  But the conditions have to be just right in order for the photo to happen: the tide has to be higher than 3 feet, otherwise the water doesn’t come up high enough to go around the stack.  At the same time, the tide has to be lower than about 4 feet, otherwise the ledge you stand on to see the waterfall from gets doused repeatedly by the waves.  And you also need some nice sunset color to the southeast.

With the limits imposed by the tides, there’s only a window of a few days about every two weeks when you can attempt this shot.  And if the sunset doesn’t cooperate during that window, well then you’re out of luck and have to try again later.  I visited this shelf no fewer than five times before the conditions finally all came together for me and I was able to capture this image.

So you can see it wasn’t luck that led to this photo, but rather an understanding of the necessary conditions, and the patience and diligence required to return to this spot over and over until I got the result I wanted.

~Josh

Spring has sprung and that means the 2010 art show season has begun!  And I am excited because it means I get to be back on the street, meeting people, exhibiting my photography, and having a great time.  This weekend I will be at the 53rd annual Good Old Days celebration in downtown Pacific Grove.  I’ve never done this show before but it sounds like an absolute blast.  It’s Monterey County’s largest arts and crafts show, with over 225 art and food vendors, a parade down Pine Avenue, and live entertainment on five stages.  There’s also a California Police motorcycle competition, old-fashioned games and contests, and lots of family fun.  Admission is free is well, so there’s really no reason not to come enjoy a day out in Pacific Grove.

New Photos from Santa Cruz, Asilomar, and Big Sur

Over the winter I’ve had some fantastic opportunities to explore the central California coast and I’ve been amazed by the beauty I’ve found.  I’ve also come away with some wonderful new photos of the beaches in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Big Sur and I can’t wait to show them off.

My booth will be located on Lighthouse Ave, between 18th and 19th street, so come on out to say hello and see the new shots.

10% any print with this coupon

As always, here’s a 10% off coupon available only to my fans and supporters.  Just print it out and bring it to the show to save 10% on any of my prints.

Take care, and hope to see you at the show!

~Josh

Elephant seals are funny animals.  And I mean funny in a haha kind of way.

A happy little weaner

Had a fantastic opportunity on Saturday to go out with some researchers who were putting satellite transmitters on young elephant seals, or “weaners.”

These guys are some of the noisiest critters I’ve ever been around and it was a fairly hilarious afternoon listening to them honk, spit, hiss, burp, gurgle, yelp, squeak, and fart continuously for the entire five hours we spent with them.

Soon these 90-100 kg “little babies” will be headed out to sea to make their way in a scary world filled with hungry white sharks. Sadly only about 40% of them will survive to adulthood, but the ones who do make it will be big bad monsters who you don’t want to mess with.

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Poseidon, the god of the sea, has a pretty sweet 100,000-inch movie screen with a trillion watt projector which plays all your favorite hits.  He’s got a pretty sweet sound system too and man, when the bass is booming you can feel it throughout your whole body.  Last night he invited me over to watch a classic sunset, which was nice of him because that’s one of my all time favorite pieces of entertainment.  We both forgot the snacks though, so I went home hungry, but I didn’t really mind since the light show was so good.