I squeezed in a short period of time (about an hour) at St. Augustine Beach in the late afternoon of the day we arrived. We'd first grabbed a late lunch at
Salt Life Food Shack, after which I scooted across Beach Boulevard (Highway A1A) and took all of the beach scenes you see in this post.
I didn't get really overly excited about the shots I was composing until I got to the south side of the pier and saw sundry reflection patterns represented in the photo you see leading off the post. The image is a single-frame shot, and the intermittent sand bars in the foreground struck me as tailor-made for photographers seeking to do compositions of lines and patterns. If you squint or blow up the image, you can make out the solitary seagull sitting on the middle sand bar on the right, approximately between the second and third pier support pillar from the end.
I made a lot of shots integrating sections and cross sections of the pier and reflections, in several cases finding other seagulls on the sand bars, which you'll see below.
As much as I like this image, there is one thing that bothers me. And maybe I shouldn't fret about it. Heck, it isn't even the primary subject matters. It's the coloring in the upper left corner. It kind of looks like something I'd see in Photoshop if I had been trying to erase distracting content matter in that area. But not so. That's the natural color and pattern of the portion of sky uncluttered by cloud cover. You see it again just above the pier on the right side of the image. nd the haze that dominates the top portion was its natural color that afternoon.
To view a larger and sharper version of any image here, just click on the photo. To see a
full gallery of images from my visit to St. Augustine Beach, click on the link in this sentence.
Photo geek stuff: All images were taken with my Canon 6D equipped with a Tamron 28-300 f/3.5-6.3 lens with all compositions bracketed for three different exposures in 2/3 increments. All photos you see here were processed as single images.
The shot above includes as much of the pier as I could get into the frame (with the lens fixed at 28mm). While I liked the perspective, I didn't think the image did as much as the section and cross sections (my term for radical crops) that I would do later. Those are represented in the first three below, where a gull becomes a more integral part of the composition ... and the pier support beams (or their reflections) serve as compositional frames.
I got the itch to make a monochrome version of a couple images, and one of those is the one you see above. The same woman and dog are in the image below, a shot taken about 5 minutes after the one above.
Above: I made two shots of this scene, both including the threesome on the right trying to get a kite airborne. I present this version because the kite is lower to the ground (the other version has the kite much higher, which necessitated me including a lot more vacuous sky in the frame), and because -- even though the threesome are relatively small in the composition -- you can tell that the kite-string holder is struggling with the task. By the time I made the other version of the scene, the woman and dog were no longer in the picture.
Above: Another composition in which the people involved are quite a distance from me. The woman on the left appears to be taking a selfie, the man on the right is hunting for buried metal, and the seagull above is heading south, destination unknown (apologies to the late Savannah writer/poet Conrad Aiken).
Above: Youngsters marvel at the seagulls on this sandbar.
Above: I actually started the beach shoot on the north side of the pier, which is where I was when the shot above was taken. I liked the juxtaposition of people on the pier and below on the beach.
Above and next six below: More compositions -- taken from the bluff -- integrating the pier, shadows, reflections and beach walkers.
Above and below: The same pier, just level with the walking surface -- and incorporating the furniture along the way.
Above: A gull navigating low to the sand.
We drove to the St. Augustine Lighthouse after stopping at the beach because it was in the same "neighborhood." That late in the day, neither Lee Ann nor I were in a mood to climb 219 steps to the top, which unfortunately meant we couldn't get close to the lighthouse to get unobstructed pictures. I did find an opening in some brush to snag -- and frame -- the lighthouse in the shot you see below. The picture above is on the grounds outside the lighthouse gift shop. I was pleased with how it turned out as a single frame image; I was shooting with back light, but fortunately for me, the trees and foliage blocked just enough of the flare to give me sufficient detail.
Next up: Flagler College
Previous posts in this series:
Savannah at night
Savannah in daylight
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