Another shot from last weekend at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands preserve near Los Angeles. None of my pitiful attempts at shooting shore birds were successful. I got a brief bout of lens-envy seeing the monster 600mm lenses a number of other guys were using to pick off wildlife.
Then I made this shot on the way back to the parking lot.
17mm, boys! S-E-V-E-N-T-E-E-N. Booyah! Think your can make this shot with your $10,000 lens? I don't think so! 
Smack in the middle of the industrial area south of Los Angeles, bordered by a highway to the south, and oil pumping stations to the north, is the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. It's a small patch of protected open marsh with a good variety of visiting birds to look at. I tried to take some photos of some egrets with my 105mm, but it was nowhere long enough to capture the birds at a decent size. I needed the 500- or 600mm monster lens some other photographers there were lugging around.
No matter. I was there hoping to catch a sunset, not shoot birds. As the sunset hour approached the skies remained clear and cloudless. I was getting a bit discouraged. Sunsets without clouds are boring. Though, about half an hour before the sun went down some thin, wispy clouds drifted in. This is not perfect but it's pretty good, just enough presence in the sky to catch the reddish light. Set up the tripod, screwed in my 3-stop ND filter onto my 17-40mm lens, and managed to squeeze out several shots before the magical light vanished.
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