I’ve been taking advantage of living near the coast and have visited a few times this fall, looking for photographic moments. I’ve been to the Oceanside Pier several times now, and this is the latest shot I made there.

This image is a blend. I was experimenting with long shutter speeds to smooth the ocean and show movement in the clouds. The first exposure was two minutes, and the sky had beautiful, vibrant color. I took another immediately afterward at three minutes. With about 20–30 seconds left in that second exposure, the pier lights came on. It was a nice shot of the pier, but the clouds had already lost much of their color.

I blended the two frames in Photoshop. Using layers, I placed the first “lights off” shot on the top layer and the second shot with the lights on underneath. I changed the blend mode of the top image to “Screen” and, like magic, the lights came on!

Here is an image of the pier taken a few weeks earlier. The lights weren’t on yet. I was waiting for them, but got impatient and left too soon. Five minutes later, on my walk back to the car. the lights went on. So I had to come back.