Sometimes It Pays to Have Company

I do a lot of photo trips alone.  I enjoy working by myself, and of course that allows me to set the agenda for when and where to go.

I do sometimes travel with another photographer, Tim Dubois.  Tim is good company, and I enjoy the trips we take together.

On a recent trip to the coast I was struggling to find a subject I thought was interesting when I saw Tim shooting some sea foam on the beach.  It looked pretty cool to me, too, and so I shot a bunch of good stuff that I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise.

I got the idea of shooting some of them as out-of-focus abstracts, which I mentioned to Tim, so maybe Tim benefited from sharing his find with me.

Everything Gets Better with Time

Or maybe not.  But my editing certainly has, and software has improved too.  The upper image is a shot I took in 2006, edited as well as I could at the time using DxO Optics Pro and Photoshop.

These days I do my conversions in Lightroom instead of DxO, and my Photoshop skills have improved, also.  The lower image, which I reprocessed today, shows the scene more as I saw it that day in 2006.

A couple of thoughts.  First, always shoot in RAW so that you can take advantage of all the improvements that come down the pike as time goes by.  Second, hang on to images that look like they have potential, even if you don't know how to realize that potential today.  You might learn tomorrow.

(Note:  I did choose a different frame to work with today, but the earlier frame was similar in exposure, etc.)

Frame for Clarity and Simplicity

Sometimes the difference between a good photograph and a poor one is just a matter of changing point of view by a few feet.  I found this great blue heron standing on a rock at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.  (Curiously, several other people walked with 50 feet of this rather large bird without noticing him.)

I shot a few frames quickly, in case he flew off, but I didn't like the green moss in the background, and I saw that the heron's head fell in an awkward location.  By moving up the beach and then laying down on the rocks, I was able to reframe with the simpler background seen in the lower shot.

This photo was taken with a Canon 60D, the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom, and the EF 1.4X II extender.