The Beach

I went to hang out on the beach during spring break. I wasn’t there to shoot photos but I brought a camera just in case. March is a little early in the year to go to the beach, but on the coast of Texas spring comes early. The first day I was there it was cool and windy, but it warmed up after that.

The first photo below is from the first day and you can see how cloudy it was. One nice thing about so few people on the beach is that many of the seashells are undisturbed and easy to find. Also, there weren’t any people to Photoshop out of my pictures. I was trying to capture how reflective the wet sand was between waves and used a seashell for the foreground. This photo was shot with an iPhone and I didn’t have as much editing ability as I would with a camera photo, but I think it turned out OK.

The next morning I ran down to the beach for sunrise. I ran because I got started a little later than I wanted to. The board walk sort of gets half consumed by the dune as it gets to the beach and I wanted to include this in a sunrise image. The problem is that the board walk faces SouthEast and sunrise was to the East so the viewer’s eye is drawn in the wrong direction by the boardwalk. I like the photo anyway.

As the sun rose, I got to watch it with an assortment of birds that also gathered on the beach to greet the new day. I thought I was lucky to find the heron standing out there with the seagulls near the surf with the sun rising just beyond. Please take a good look at this photo before looking at the next.

The photo below is the image before I Photoshopped out much of the washed up driftwood, seaweed, and other detritus that was on the beach. It was actually quite a bit of work, but I found the debris on the beach to be very distracting. I didn’t get rid of all of it, just enough to make it look less cluttered. What do you think of my work? I can see some of the artifacts of the clean-up that I just couldn’t much improve.

And lastly, for anyone who has been missing their seagull friends, I have a few images of them on the beach. There is a Ring-billed Gull and some Laughing Gulls.

Thanks for reading.

26 thoughts on “The Beach”

  2. That first photo is stunning, even though it was taken with an iPhone. Sometimes camera phones can put out surprisingly high-quality pictures.

    Even though I’m kind of a purist, I must admit that I like the photoshopped photo of the heron better than the original. The seaweed really does clutter up the image.

    It’s so sad that a certain someone we know wasn’t able to visit her seagull friends.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I hadn’t considered the seashell closeups before I saw that and the way the sky was reflecting on the wet sand. I didn’t have my camera with me so I used the phone. The next day I went down with my camera but the scene wasn’t there anymore.

      I didn’t like removing all of the seaweed and such but it was just way too messy.

      Perhaps she will be visited by the laughing seagulls at some point in the near future.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. I like the seashell and reflection. Creative.
    Having grown up near an unedited Pacific beach, I visualize mounds of rotting kelp, blobs of tar, 45-degree water, and sand accumulating in the nether regions of a wetsuit. Please feel free to edit whatever you wish from the image.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Sometimes the gulf beaches get tar balls from ocean floor seeps but I didn’t see any on this trip. Also some years the Atlantic Ocean sargassum gets really thick and washes up on shore but I didn’t see any of that either. The water itself was about 68-70F. It gets a bit warmer in the summer. I’ve never worn a wet suit but have had lots of fun with abrasive sand in my trunks.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. Your first picture with the seashell is amazing!
    Love them all, but especially that first one. Makes me one to click my heels together 3x and be at the beach!
    How kind of you to get some pics of my friends for me. And that heron adds to the picture. He didn’t want to be left out.
    “Laughing gulls?” They must have been laughing at the funny guy behind the camera. 😄

    Liked by 1 person

  6. I know you like carrying light and wide, but was wondering what the image with the heron and gulls would have been like from ground level, putting the heron’s head somewhat in the plane of the rising sun, using a zoom tele and maybe 1.4 converter with some compression.

    Liked by 1 person

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