414 - Playa Los Cocos
Today's shoot at Playa Los Cocos was straight up cocos. Either that or it sucked. You're gonna have to read to find out.
Goddamn, these intro lines are going to be the death of me. I'm not going to lie, I'm not in the mood to write this post right now, guys. I had a solid ass week of photography so far, and I'm starting to check out for some reason.
But guess what? I'm gonna write the post anyway. Because I need to analyze this shoot.
OK. Let's seem. Hmmm...
How can we make this interesting? Well, let's start by saying we started off a beach that had reports of a sex offender. But we didn't know this yet- we were on a picture perfect beach. White sand, palm tree shacks, and turquoise blue water to swim through. Even a crab or two for good measure.
You know what? Let's just say it. For $5, it was one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever had the fortune of being on.
But within 5 minutes of arriving, we found out from an online source that some dude with a history of assaulting women was roaming the area. And he owns a horse company. (According to the iOverlander.) Apparently his play is that he gets you to ride horses with him, then makes a move on an unexpecting girl when alone.
Well, shit.
Since we weren't in the mood to deal with a rampant sex offender, so we moved a couple beaches over. Just in case. We also noticed the post on iOverlander was from a couple months ago, so we weren't too concerned about the horse assaulter.
But guess what?
He still came. Galloped on up. My guess is that he solicits ALL the beaches in town for horses/sex.
The moment he arrived, I knew what we were dealing with. He was a bit of a chump, to be honest. We politely declined his horse tour, as he creepily checked out Haley. I looked him in the eye like a dog hunting a rat, and he left.
However, that didn't make the situation any less uncomfortable. I was still worried about what might happen later, but it appeared we may have reached a temporary climax of the situation. Luckily, he never came back.
From then on, it appeared as though we had earned our paradise.
The interesting thing about THIS beach was that it had a massive overlook that we could hike up in order to get a better view of the area. It would provide a nice alternative to shooting directly on the shoreline.
Once we got to the top, the first thing I noticed was these pelicans just chilling near the water. The wavy water cast such a strange pattern, I couldn't resist the pair:
“Duo Illusion”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-20mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 160 ~ 200mm ~ 1/500s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
It reminded me of the pelican shot I got a Punta Brava.
After that, I began to think a bit more about my shooting process as a whole. I'm starting to realize the importance of "warming up." It's always been something I've been aware of, but not consciously doing very well. Essentially I mean getting your flow up so you're in "state" and can shoot photography better.
I need to be doing this EVERY SINGLE SHOOT. (Vlogging is a helpful alternative to warming up.)
So I looked around again. What else was I REALLY vibing with? I wanted to get one more small thing before I took on the MASSIVE overlook view in front of us.
One thing I noticed on the mountain in the distance was this painting of Mary, where one has to hike up a mountain to get to it. I snagged a pic, but my lighting wasn't that good. I looked down, and noticed that this shadow was creeping up the mountain.
If I check back in about 10 minutes, it should be right below the Mary. That would make a perfect composition- a representation of heaven/hell (darkness) creeping up on the Virgin Mary.
Here's the shot:
“Heaven/Hell”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-20mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 500 ~ 178mm ~ f/10 ~ 1/320s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
That's another thing I've been working on, symbolism in my shots. How can I represent what this image is on a DEEPER level using light? If I simply took that shot in the pure sunlight, I would lose all it's power.
It was at this point that I lost all my mojo. I quickly became bored of the 70-200mm f/2.8 shots, and realized I wanted to fly my drone for sunset. We had a perfect overlook of the ocean on our hands, so why not use it? Here's the shot I snagged with my drone:
I wanted the shot to look like the ocean was never-ending, just continuously flowing in the distance. So I cropped off the top to represent that. Also there wasn't ANY clouds in the sky, so I didn't have much of a choice.
FYI, sky replacements don't work on low megapixel drone shots. The resolution isn't good enough to blend correctly. So keep that in mind.
And with that this shoot concludes. The whole day felt like some kind of trial against this horse sex offender dude that somehow worked out. Adventure photography is strange sometimes.
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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