The Beach House is a marvelous restaurant in Cadriff by the Sea, the poetically named oceanside community in northern San Diego County, California. The restaurant itself is oceanside, too — and that doesn’t mean a block or two away, but right on the beach.
This photo was taken with an iPhone at sunset. As you might expect, the gentleman in front is nothing but a silhouette, the sky is blown out, and generally speaking the view doesn’t look as good as a photo as it does to the eye:
But this photo, taken just seconds later, looks much better. The gentleman across the table is no longer just a silhouette, the sky has clouds, the waves look much better, and even the two glasses in the foreground look better:
The second photo was taken using the iPhone’s HDR (High Dynamic Range) setting. This essentially takes two photos, one slightly overexposed and one slightly underexposed, and then combines the two. It isn’t entirely perfect if there is motion; if you look at the gentleman’s hair, you will see slight ghosting at the back as he moved his head a bit. But, generally speaking, this is impressive, considering that it was taken with a phone.
Not quite impressive (it is slightly out of focus) is this photo, also by iPhone, of my dinner at the Beach House: hoisin-glazed salmon with Shitake garlic Shanghai noodles and tempura sea beans. The salmon was impressive, the noodles were fine, but the real surprise were the tempura sea beans. Marvelous.
