Climbing on the Rocks

Posted on February 24, 2009 to Landscape, Ocean, Silhouette

This picture comes with a funny story. It was taken on one of my last days in Santa Barbara. The previous evening I had taken a lot of pictures from this area, and after reviewing them, I had in mind some additional ideas for this particular sunset. Of course, on this day when I reached the beach there were a few young kids playing in the surf, climbing on my photogenic rocks, etc. Not only were they interfering with my shot, but given the size of the waves, I was sure I would have to watch these poor kids get brutally smashed against the rocks. Since I only had limited time (and light) at the beach, I decided -- pesky kids be damned -- I would just set up my tripod and snap away anyway. I figured I'd take a million pictures and composite the kids out.

After about 10 minutes of this, their concerned mother comes up to me and wants to know what the hell I'm doing. It's at times like these, when I'm trying to explain what the hell I'm doing, that I'm smacked with the reality that not everyone can appreciate just taking a million of the same picture of just rocks and ocean, waiting for some nice patterns in the waves. Well, I did my best to explain and showed this woman some of the pictures in the camera. Luckily the last couple shots had avoided the children. So I told her that I wasn't interested in snapping pictures of the kids, just the landscape (true) so I was opportunistically waiting for them to be out of the shot (false). Sorry random Santa Barbara beach lady, I stretched the truth.

Well, there's no point to the story, other than to share the amusement of someone suspecting me for a creepy pervert. It's insulting, because if I were a creepy pervert, I know I would be a much better creepy pervert than she was giving me credit for, that's for sure. I certainly wouldn't be incompetently conspicuous, with my tripod, wide-angle lens, ten feet away, and standing on the top of a huge rock formation. Of course, you can't tell the concerned parent how much thought you've apparently put into how you would hypothetically spy on their children. Anyway, when I got back to my room I found that some of the pictures that have the children in silhouette (this one in particular) turned out quite nice. Just like the random surfer passing by, sometimes people can add a nice surprising touch to a landscape.