Camping at Patrick's Point - Seeing this area from a different perspective

In the last blog post, I showed up-close images taken with my macro lens. In this blog post I am highlighting some images that were taken from a unique perspective, or taken with using a foreground or background to support the rest of the image.

I saw this photo opportunity right after arriving at our camp site. We had bright blue skies and the sun was lighting this great bloom of Queen Anne's Lace, and I just had to shoot some images of this. I wanted to shoot this from a unique perspective, so I got down low and shot straight up into the flower. 

Later that evening, as the sun departed from Northern California, I grabbed this shot. I could have just shot a picture of just the sun going down into the ocean, but thought that I would frame the image with some of the local foliage and fallen tree branches.

The next day, we traveled into Ferndale, CA to have some lunch and see some old friends. I took a walk and saw this lone flower growing in front of these pretty purple flowers. I positioned myself so that the flower was towards the bottom of the image (using the rule of thirds) and shot at an aperture (f4) that would make it the only flower that was perfectly in focus.

When hiking through the giant redwood forest, I wanted to capture the majesty of these old growth trees. Pointing the camera straight up, I shot this image at f16 to create the star burst effect from the sun, which was barely visible through the canopy of trees. (Photographers note: Whenever you are taking pictures, especially in an area like this, it is always a good idea to look up, down and all around you to see what might be interesting. It never ceases to amaze me how many different images can be achieved from one spot, just by looking in all directions.)

As my wife was scouring the beach for agates, I took this photo of the seagulls on the edge of the water line. I really like the complete calm of the gulls with the rough sea directly behind them. Again, the foreground and background work together to tell a story and create the image.

Just after shooting the seagull image, I thought that it would be cool to lay the 5D Mark II down on the rocks to get a totally different perspective of the beach. This placement of the camera really magnifies the rocks and helps the viewer understand that this is not your usual sandy beach. I shot this image at f13 because I wanted most everything to be in focus, with just a hint of blur in the foreground and background.

I also though that this would make a cool video from this spot, so I put the 5D Mark II into video mode, waited for a family to get into the frame, and shot this. Pretty cool stuff.

Look for wildlife photos and cool night shots in the next 2 blog posts.