A Nice Day by the Ocean (part one)

It came to me that even though I live just a few minutes from the coast, I haven't yet posted any seascapes here, mostly because I haven't done any recently and haven't been thinking about it much. So, a Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do was the excuse I needed to head down to my favorite spot south of La Jolla Cove, especially since we were between large storms here in southern California and I hoped that some good stuff might be happening with the waves and the sky (I used to fly sailplanes for fun and you get pretty good at judging the weather when you're into soaring). Turned out that I was right... some pretty impressive breakers were riding in and the clouds were doing nice things to the light. Also, it was low tide when I got there, so was able to get out on the rocks and use them for my foreground, which is essential if you can manage it without getting soaked.

Shooting here is a much more dynamic situation than the usual landscape where everything is more or less static. The waves are changing second by second, along with the light, there are gulls flying in and out of the frame and the water flowing over the rocks actually varies the composition constantly without even moving. You have to be careful not to get dumped on by the occasional larger-than-expected wave, also.

The whole afternoon, I don't think I wandered more than 200 yards in any direction but was able to come up with at least a dozen distinct and different images. I think it might be interesting to post a series of the best ones over the next week or two as a study in how much variation lighting and framing can produce without actually changing the subject very much at all. The progression from mid-day light to sunset and beyond is pretty striking.