After The Sun Goes Down

I was supposed to take some beach portraits today, and had my camera ready for the job. Unfortunately the shoot was postponed at the last minute. I did, however, find myself on the beach this evening anyway. I was crossing over the little bridge that connects the Isle Of Palms to Sullivan’s Island just after the sun dipped below the horizon. The sky is just awesome on the southern coast in October. I don’t know the meteorological reason why, I just know that this is the month for getting fantastic sunset and twilight photos in the Charleston area. So, after I crossed the bridge I made a quick judgment call and pulled over.

As I was grabbing my camera it dawned on me that I didn’t have either my tripod or mono-pod with me. Way to be prepared, boy scout! In all seriousness, I didn’t pack the tripod because the portraits were supposed to have been done in the middle of the day and the models were three little girls – no need for a tripod for that. Luckily I had my new Tamron f/2.8 lens on my camera for the portraits. I needed to pump the ISO pretty high if I was going to be hand holding this scene. I walked up the beach and grabbed this shot at ISO 640:

And then walked up to the rocks and got down real low and composed this one followed by the one up at the top of this article. I had to up the ISO to 800 for these as you could see the sky got much darker within minutes.

These aren’t perfectly sharp shots, and if I had remembered my tripod, I would have used a deeper depth of field to add to the sharpness of the overall shot. I think this type of exposure worked in spite of my normal intentions. They have a bit more depth of character and emotion with their slight “imperfections”. Atlanta based photog Zack Arias has an interesting post sampling some of his purposefully imperfect shots. I couldn’t agree with him more. Some of my favorite shots are less than perfect in their traditional execution, but absolutely perfect as my interpretation of the scene or moment. The limitations that get imposed on you can often be used in your favor if you can creatively work around them.