During my move to northern California a few months back, I stopped by the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon. It is one of my favorite public aquariums by far, although I haven’t made it to the Monterey Bay Aquarium yet, and I hear it’s quite nice. It was a January morning with very few visitors, so I had the aquarium mostly to myself.

A large display with Sea nettles captivated me. It was very meditative watching slow-moving jellyfish in a dimly-lit room. For these shots, I post-edited the images, desaturating the deep-blue color of illuminated water, emphasizing shapes and colors of the jellyfish.

This past weekend, my friend Chelsea and I met up for a short camping trip along the California North Coast, starting in Fort Bragg and ending in San Francisco. Stopping by a boutique store in Fort Bragg, Chelsea found a golden “space” suite, and after some persuasion, it was hers. An outfit like that (a “daily wear”, she called it) begged for a beach photo shoot.

It’s always a treat and a challenge to work with Chelsea. In her previous life in Anchorage, Alaska, she did a brief stint as a professionally-trained model. However, once in the wilds of nature, her inner energy keeps her hopping, like a chickadee, making it almost impossible to have her pose. After a couple of years of photographing her, I came to the conclusion that the only way to get interesting images with my friend is to just let her do her thing and be ready with my camera.

We found an interesting rocky outcropping on one of the beaches between Fort Bragg and Fort Ross. The tricky part was lightning and reflectiveness of the outfit. It was around 2 pm, not the best time for such a session, so I decided to go with the more “Mars” feeling of the images with a powerful flash and exposure compensation. The images are minimally post-processed.