Beach

Beach Sights - Beach Sounds

Seeing this shot, I immediately hear beach sounds. I hear the loons and geese, children playing in the sand, laughter from the dock, and splashing as the youthful dive into the lake water. Though I see none of that, it is all here.

In composing this shot, I made sure not to split my image in half. For many shots, equal amounts of foreground and background in an image is boring and divides attention enough to lose attention.

Choosing more beach to balance the dominating red posts and less lake to accompany the smaller buoys made for a more interesting image than one where the space is evenly allotted.

I shot with an aperture of f/8, shutter speed of 1/250 and my focal length was 55.

Coming Home

After a day out fishing, the gull glides onto the golden beach. Home.

I used my zoom lens to get as close as possible to the gulls without scaring them away. I composed this shot using the shoreline to help draw attention to the subject. Including all of the gull's shadow was important. Too often we see shadows cut off in images. Bringing the image into photoshop to add a texture layer enhanced the image and brought a real sense of coming home at the end of the day with the golden hue.

Beach Flowers and Beach Berries

There to explore the whole of the beach, not just the water and sandy shore, we hiked off into the sand dunes. I was delighted to see things I would have missed had we stayed seated on our beach chairs. The Flowers and berries, driftwood and dunes broadened our beach experience.

Though sand is not my camera's friend, I decided to take most of my gear along to the beach. With fewer people early in the season and a calm day, I thought it might be worth the risk. Changing lenses on a sandy beach takes extra care but thankfully I had an extra set of hands to help me out with this.

In the two pictures in this post I used my macro lens. Wee tiny, the flowers and berries both would have been lost to a standard lens.

Day at the Beach

I went to the beach with my daughter today. How I love the beach! We had the sand and sun to ourselves for about an hour before a smattering of beach-goers joined us. The hot sun and calm day were perfect!

The gulls seemed more timid than those that circle at high season. Eventually one came close to where we were but for the most part they kept their distance.

Spending the day together with my daughter, getting sun-kissed at the beach and listening to some golden oldies on the open road on the way back was exactly what I needed!

Gulls' Beach

They moved as one. Scores of gulls banded together and covered the sky with one swoop. To be the lone witness was humbling.

Gulls' Beach