An absolute dreamscape in my own backyard. I sought this location and took this photo to prove that you do not have to travel or invest a ton of money to find and capture incredible. Granted, I live in an incredible state for landscape and architecture photography, California. If you live in the city, at times this stuff can feel so far away. Located just 30 minutes south of Irvine, California, Thousand Steps Beach is a little gem tucked away in Laguna Beach. The place has a dedicated filter in that, you have to really want to go and be physically able to go to this spot because of the massive staircase leading to it. A giant cave that at times is inaccessible during high tide, just adds to the allure and beauty of this site, along with a piece of history as John Wayne's beloved beach home was located here.
I also shot this image with a cropped Nikon camera and a fairly inexpensive Nikkor Kit Lens that came with my camera 18-55mm f/4.5 lens. I shot this on the affordable consumer camera, the Nikon D7500. With no filters on me, I chose these settings to soften the landscape and add some blur to the water. Shot this dirty at 30mm, f/29, ISO 50, 1.6 sec.
Shot RAW and processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic (Desktop). The strategy here was to go with the softness and bring out the natural brown and blue combo here. I converted yellow to brown and added a slight teal to the blue by adjusting the hue slightly.