Friday, August 24, 2007

Beachfront action

Well, last week saturday dawned beautifully ... cool, low humidity, sunshine, and blue skies. So we headed to one of our favorite parks in the region, Mentor Lagoons Park, located in the Cleveland suburb of Mentor (hence the name), and on the lakefront. It's probably one of the only undeveloped beachfront parks in Ohio, at least on this side of Ohio, so it's pretty special. There's only some trails there, a nearby marina, and probably a good mile or so of beach, usually deserted. When we go walking and beachcombing along the beach, we're often the ONLY people out there. It's amazing.



However, the weather didn't hold, and the clouds rolled in. No rain, but the sun and blue skies went away, so our beautiful August saturday ended up looking like a bleak day in Autumn.



So while I wanted some lovely scenic shots, instead I took the opportunity to experiment with the camera, play with the settings, mess with the depth of field, and just generally see what my camera could do. The results weren't all pretty, but I did get some interesting shots.



It was also a case to experiment in composition, not just go for the "pretty" shot of scenary, but just play around with whatever I had to work with.



Ultimately, it turned out to be a pretty good day. The shots weren't bad ... nothing terribly special, but I feel a lot more comfortable with my camera, and I've been pleased by some of the shots. A little tweaking is going to be necessary in Photoshop Elements, but I still gotta read the manual for that!




As usual with all the photos on this blog, double-click to see a bigger version of each picture.

Next up, we leave for vacation to Cape Cod. I plan on taking a helluva lot of photos, so hopefully I'll get some good results. The scenary there is perfect, the lighting is out of this world ... now all I gotta do is feel confident in my camera's features and my eye for composition. Hopefully I won't screw it all up too badly, and I'll have some good results.

Which of course, I'll post here. That's the idea behind this blog, after all!

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