My concentration explores the beauty of Huntington Beach. I am highly influenced by my Hawaiian and Thai heritage, and the wonderful memories I have of visiting this beach over many family vacations since I was a young child. I was inspired by Massimo Vitali’s ability to capture people interacting with the beach and his amazing use of color.

 

My concentration depicts a variety of locations around Huntington Beach that capture the beauty of the many saturated colors of the beach and the sky. I originally used Photoshop to process my photographs because that is what I was taught. However, I decided to push myself & learn a new processing program (Adobe Lightroom) so that I could expand the dynamic range & incredible colors of my imagery. For instance, in slide 1, “Reflections”, I utilized the new Lightroom techniques to bring out unique tones and highlights in the photograph. Slides 3, 4, and 5, “Sunset at Huntington Beach”, “Wavy”, and “Crash”, create the ability to capture simplicity because they were basic but still intriguing due to the burst of color. I focused on rhythm in slide 8, “Wings” and slide 10, “Boardwalk SpIash”. In “Wings”, capturing rhythm was represented by the boats and the clouds, complementing each other as if they were parallel lines. Then, in “Boardwalk Splash”, repetition was created with the pillars which formed leading lines for perspective. In my final slide, “Peace”, the people interacting around the ocean capture a subtle moment and bring a calming scene. I feel that every photograph represents who I am and the things I will always enjoy doing, capturing them is just another way to show it.