378 - Devil’s Punchbowl
Oh lawdy, the Devil's Punchbowl has taken my soul. No straight up for real, I'm possessed by how goddamn beautiful this place was.
Except it was an absolute bitch to find. How did they leave no signs telling you how to get IN the actual place? When you arrive at the main parking lot, there's a beach right across the street (south) that one would assume leads to it. Nah, it's just a random beach. We spent a solid 45 minutes crawling around the rocks at sunrise, looking for an entrance to the Punchbowl.
If you've never heard of this place, it's essentially a massive rock "bowl" that the ocean spills into. There's an overlook just west of the parking lot, but there's no clear way down. Obviously one could get a shot of the place from the overlook, but the angle was extremely limiting because you're essentially standing behind a guard rail on the edge of a cliff. We NEEDED to get down in it.
Luckily it was sunrise, so we didn't have to worry about timing the crowds too much. The sky didn't matter too much either because the rock was the main subject here, and it was likely to be slightly blown out. So we had time to mess around.
Also one side note- low tide is necessary to go inside the punchbowl, so being their during the morning was ideal. That's one thing I'm slowly learning is a variable with seascape photography. Tide AND sunrise/sunset have to line up.
Since the south beach and west overlook didn't have an entrance, we decided to wander north into this neighborhood of hopes to finding another entrance. Spoiler alert... We did. A fairly hidden entrance. Once you're on the north beach, the walk to the actual punchbowl is fairly easy, just cross some tidepools and all of a sudden you're in.
And this is where the fun began. The place was straight magic. The walls had this red edge to them that looked so intense... Contrast that with the blueish glow from the early morning waves and the whole thing was set up to be a red/cyan masterpiece.
I pulled out my wide angle lens and went to town. My foreground ended up being this smooth texture of the blue rocks, contrasted with the entire red dome. 17mm did the trick just fine- even enough for a square crop if I wanted to post to Instagram. Here's what I wound up with:
Honestly I thought I'd need to exposure blend the sky but I didn't need to. The dynamic range of the a7rIII surprises me sometimes... It also helped that it was a wee foggy out and the sun hadn't hit the entire scene yet.
The hardest thing for me lately is determining when a photo edit is DONE. That pic you just saw caused me so much distress because I couldn't decide if it was complete or not. This is one of the curses of learning Photoshop... More edits more problems. At a certain point I'm realizing I just have to say fuck it I'm done.
We started walking back to the van when this red bird caught my eye. It's bill was so rugged and red against it's black feathers. Kind of like the punchbowl. I approached it slowly... Very slowly.
One thing I'm realizing with birds is any sudden movements can be fatal, and to take as many shots as possible each step of the way. Literally every step... Take a few shots. Next step... Take a few shots. Next step... That way you don't miss out if it suddenly flies away. Don't be greedy with your steps closer! Surprisingly, this bird let me get all up in it's grill. I was literally 5 feet away from it when I snagged this pic:
“Ducked Up”
Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm 2.8
ISO 100 ~ 103mm ~ f/2.8 ~ 1/1000s
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Fun shot. I usually don't even bother with bird photography because my setup maxes out at 200mm. But this bird was just chill for some reason. Anddddddddd that's all folks! Solid shoot for a solid day out on the beach. I'd go back for sure.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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