Daily Photo: Us at the Beach

When we are at Cocoa Beach, if we are not in the water, we are usually spending some time watching the other people at the beach around us. It’s often pretty interesting because you never know what you might see.

On this particular day, we watched a young couple come set their stuff up, including their umbrella, their chairs, and whatever else. But the one thing that caught my eye was that the guy was carrying a camera tripod. And not a small, travel-sized tripod, either, but a full-size tripod. Once they had everything set up, he set the tripod up, put the camera on it, set the timer, and took a picture of the two of them together. Then they took another one, just for good measure. After that, he folded up the tripod and put it away.

I was thinking that was a good bit of weight to carry out to the beach just for a couple of shots. But then, we don’t usually get pictures of the two of us together, either. I didn’t even carry my small travel-tripod to the beach; I just left it in the hotel room so it would be one less thing to carry.

But after watching them, we thought that a picture of us together would be a good idea. So I improvised. I had brought my wide-angle lens that day, so the camera wouldn’t have to be very far from us. I set it up on top of our cooler, which was sitting right in front of us. I hadn’t brought my camera remote, so I just set the timer and waited for 10 seconds. And there we had it - a picture of us.

Photo location: Lori Wilson Park, Cocoa Beach, Florida
A three-exposure (-2, 0, +2) HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, edited in GIMP