This is a journal of our retirement move and life in Ucluelet on Vancouver Island's ruggedly beautiful west coast. The town's motto is "Enjoy life on the edge".

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Wednesday 18 June 2014

Back to the Back (of the Beach)

One of my favorite spots when beach walking is the back of the beach. There's often so much drama there, from the huge logs that the sea throws about like jackstraws, to the delicate and often beautiful plants that cling tenaciously to almost anything in their quest to perpetuate life.

This morning, Marcelle was busy working on the Compassionate Vancouver Facebook page she put together, so I ventured out alone to Long Beach to do some photography.

The morning was partially overcast, which suits me fine as it offers a scenic element in the sky that is very useful to add not only drama, but depth to the images. The overcast also provides a muted, non-directional lighting that yields pictures that don't suffer from the harsh highlight/shadow portrayal you get on really sunny days.

This type of sky is also very effective for black and white photography, which I very much enjoy.

Besides looking for detail shots that have an element that catches my eye, I love to look for tracks in the sand. There's often little areas of drama that you can isolate and feature, and I find that this works out really well when showcased in B&W.

 

 

 

Of course, now and then, the occasional splash of colour is useful to show the wonderful variety that can be found at the back of the beach. The sun-and-salt-bleached logs make a perfect foil for the colour elements.

 

 

 

With the morning's oblique lighting, I found several places where there was a lovely display of sand, scalloped by both the water and wind into mini-dunes, that, again, do so well when processed for B&W.

 

 

 

As I'm still recovering from my hernia surgery (eight days ago now), I'm finding my stamina just isn't what it was, so I managed only a couple of kilometers today, but as I trudged wearily back up the beach to the car, I couldn't have been happier.

There's nothing quite like life on the edge!

 

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