So today’s blog post is a bit of a throwback Thursday. Today, I want to talk about some photos I took at Mt. Helix Park. If you’re not familiar with San Diego, Mt. Helix Park is located in east county. It has this really cool large cross at the top of the mountain.

It has been about two years since I visited Mt. Helix Park and took these photos so my memory may be a little fuzzy lol. If I remember correctly, I ended up going to Mt. Helix Park for a meetup. I didn’t know anyone there, but I was making a habit of getting out of my comfort zone and getting to know other photographers.

I think the meet up was scheduled a little bit before sunset so I was able to get some golden hour and blue hour photos. I also was able to capture some photos of the cross being lit at night. As a noob and not very knowledgeable of low light photography, I made two “big” mistakes during this photoshoot: 1) I did not bring a tripod and 2) I did not shoot with a low enough shutter speed.

Looking at the images, my lowest shutter speed was 1/125. Now, this isn’t a bad shutter speed when there is light out, but as it got darker, a slower shutter speed would have helped with my images. My ISO ranged from 250 to like 10,000. If I had had a tripod, I could have shot at a slower shutter speed and thus a lower ISO and thus, less noise. I also was a noob at editing and so there are things I could have done with the editing to reduce the noise of the image.

Now, these images are by no means horrible, but I definitely think I could do a better job with the knowledge I have now. I can’t wait to try again.