Waterspouts

This is a picture of several waterspouts forming off the coast of San Diego
during a recent storm. This is truly a shutterdipetous shot because I happen to be in my car during the peak of this brief and rare (for San Diego) summer storm, I happen to have my camera and all my lenses, the freeway happen to be gridlocked encouraging me to take an alternate route along the coast, and I happen to be at the right time and place to see these brief formations that lasted only about 20 minutes.

For clarification, I chose the screen name Shutterdipity by combining shutter and serendipity. In the past, I felt that my good photos could often be classified as 'desirable accidents'. Of course, now I'm finding that the more I learn and the more feedback I get from others, the higher the ratio of 'desire accidents' to crap is.

This was taken on my Nikon D70 with my Tokina 12-24mm f/4 ultrawide zoom set at 12 mm. Exposure was 1/1000 at f/11. Minor levels, curves and saturation adjustments were made in Photoshop CS2. I also cropped the shot to achieve the panorama view effect.

Here's another shot at the other extreme: 200mm