At the Beach

From Saturday to Wednesday morning, Tracy and I joined mom and dad and David and mom's brothers and sister and their families at Litchfield Beach, near Pawley's Island, South Carolina. There were great waves in the mornings, this year - much better than I remember from some years past, where it seemed we'd wait a long time between rides. Tracy wasn't a huge fan of being in the water, but with Patrick's 200mm lens on her dad's camera body (which offers a 1.6x FOVCF, yielding a lens effectively 320mm) she got some great pictures.


Twice in the four mornings we had at the beach we rose before the sun and watched the sun rise. On both days it was cloudy; the first day had fairly lousy light, but the light on the second day was marvelous. The picture at the end of this post is a sunrise Tracy captured with her dad's camera and Patrick's lens. The image is as shot - no post processing has been applied.

Waiting for the sun to do something exciting, we camped a sand-crab hole. I grabbed this picture (and several like it) using Patrick's lens. The clarity of Canon's L-series lenses continues to astonish me.


Walking up the beach after watching the sunrise, we came upon another crab, beached and likely dying - at any rate, he wasn't in any hurry to move. I got this picture, below, and then scooped him up in a shoe and tossed him in the water.


There were lots of butterflies just on the other side of the dunes, frequenting some of the bushes in the yards of the beach houses. Tracy snapped this picture, below, as we were walking back one afternoon.


I also took this mailbox, which was covered in a long moss. Dad was fascinated by it: just a simple, white plastic mailbox on a painted wooden pole that was almost covered on one side with moss.


Light in the evening favored the sea-oats and the dunes. The filter had fogged from being washed in the cold house and then being transported into the afternoon heat; the effect was an extremely soft background for this picture.


On our last evening, we were digging for coquinas (donax variabilis) when Tracy found a live conch, buried in the sand. We pulled it out, constructed a tide pool of sorts for it, and set it there to watch it come out of its shell. I took several pictures, but none showed off the animal as well as I'd have liked. A tank would have been better, as the conch wouldn't have buried itself and I could have gotten level with it, thus showing more than mostly its shell. For this picture, we put the animal on its back, so to speak, so it had to reach quite a ways to grip the sand and invert itself.


We didn't manage any pictures of fireworks this year; the family shot of fire works the night after we left (we stayed only for part of the week). Near our house, though, was a tree lit from below. The effect was stunning, so I took this picture.


It was a good break from work for both of us; it was nice to spend time with my family too. Both of us returned home well rested - and for me, anyway, my photographic batteries have been recharged.