Coastal Portrait

ISO: 100  Focal Length: 18mm 

Aperture: f/4.5  Shutter Speed: 1/30

This is actually a portrait of my wife and I from the day we got engaged at Solana Beach in Southern California. The sun was about to set so there was very nice directional light with a golden tint. I set the tripod up next to the cliff, dialed in the settings I wanted and put a 10 second timer on. The leading lines are what make this image.

The cliff has these great lines that not only create depth in the image but they also guide the eye right to the subject.

For post processing I used Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion and that was pretty much it. I just picked the preset I liked the best for the image, adjusted a few sliders to fine tune things and the image was good to go. 

Now I probably should've used a little wider aperture (smaller number) so the depth of field was a little shallower and the rocks would have been a little more blurred. I think the image would have been a little stronger if I had done that.