The Magic Hour

On Wednesday afternoon I left work a little early to get a head start on the Thanksgiving weekend. Jaime suggested that we head down to the beach to take a few pictures of the kids. I quickly told her that while this sounded like fun, I didn't think the light would be very good at this time of day. After all, I am an amateur photographer, and we know these things. A few minutes later, after Googling "taking photographs on the beach at sunset," I announced to Jaime that we needed to leave for the beach immediately so we could be there for the "Magic Hour" (the hour immediately after the sun goes below the horizon when the lighting is perfect). I had wanted to print the article I'd found entitled "10 Tips for Shooting Beach Photos of Kids" but I didn't want to prove that I really didn't know this stuff and was totally faking any photography expertise. Something tells me that Jaime already knows this.

We got to the beach a little before sunset and got some good shots of the kids. I learned that the odds of getting two children under the age of 3 to hold still and smile for the camera decrease exponentially from the odds of accomplishing this task with one child. I was able to get shots of each of them eating big handfuls of sand. Of course those shots are in perfect focus.

The lighting was great and we had a lot of fun.

Once the sun went down we realized we were starving and headed down PCH to the Malibu location of Duke's, one of our favorite restaurants from our days living in Huntington Beach. Duke's employs a pretty simple concept: find locations right on the water and serve fresh fish cooked in a lot of butter. What's not to love? Jaime and I each got a fantastic piece of opah, the Hawaiian moonfish. Opakapaka (pink snapper) is more fun to say, but they don't often have it on the menu, and the opah is amazing. It apparently looks like this:

Luckily the kids had filled up on sand and weren't very hungry.

It was a great way to start a holiday weekend.

PS - I think I was supposed to not post these pictures until we had selected one for our Christmas card. So if you get a card from us with one of these pictures, please act surprised.