Return to Myrtle Beach, Part IV: Clouds, light play at sundown

On our second trip to Myrtle Beach in April, I ran into some fortuitous lighting along the beach one afternoon. It gave me the dramatic contrast you see in the photo leading off the post and the first five images below this introductory text. 

And the clouds, I'd posit, present an interesting secondary element to these photos, alongside the waves and, in the last photo of the the series on dramatic lighting, the beach.  

I'd taken photographs of the Pier 14 restaurant and lounge and the adjacent pier at Myrtle Beach before, but I decided to make them, particularly the eatery, a stronger focal point of my photography on this visit. That's why you see them -- and/or portions of it -- in so many pictures after the series of dramatic lighting below. The high-vantage point shot of the pier was taken from the balcony of the place we stayed, a place we have stayed at for a few previous visits. I also used the balcony for the high-vantage shots of the sunset further down in the post. 

I used my iPhone 11 for all of the shots in this post, by the way. 

A silhouette of the Myrtle Beach downtown boardwalk area and Ferris wheel (above), a compositional subject that isn't new to me. But since I took this from the beach on the same visit as all the other images in this post, I decided to use this shot here as well. To compare, below are several other shots of the Ferris wheel as a focal point taken from the boardwalk, which got me out of the back lighting situation seen above. The shots below were taken not long after the one above.    

Back on the beach (above) for this sundown shot of the flags along the boardwalk. The cloud pattern also piqued my interest. 

Above and first four images below: Back on the boardwalk, I took a stab at some "street photography" type shots, succeeding in the classic sense only in the last two of the four below. I don't try street photography very often, but it can be rewarding at times.

Above: I might have been more pleased and better rewarded for this long-range "compression" composition of the hotels lining the beach as seen from the boardwalk if I'd have had my Canon 6D and one of my lenses with far-reaching focal range. But this gave me an idea how far I could push the iPhone in creating such compositions.  

Above and below: Shots of hotels along the beach. the one above looks northwest, so there is not quite as much dramatic backlighting as the one below, which was looking directly west.  

When I got back to the room, I still had the itch to play with the interesting clouds in some pictures, and decided to capture some of the downtown area as sunset approached. That's the story -- and the results -- behind the photos you see above and for the remainder of the post below. Some of these were shot through the glass doors on our balcony (hence the reflections), but most were taken on the balcony itself. 

Previously in this series: 

Part I: Downtown Myrtle Beach near City Hall

Part II: Atalaya Castle

Part III: Huntington Beach State Park