Jan 15-17: Santa Monica

I'm back! Not that you missed me. Well, maybe some of you did. Anyway, this weekend the family packed up and went to Santa Monica so my husband could play in an Ultimate Frisbee beach tournament. Owen and I had fun on the sidelines. I was so busy with the logistics of getting there on Friday (a 6-7 hour drive), that I forgot to take a picture. My first no picture day!!! :-( Plus, I decided against bringing the good camera, so these pictures are with our Canon Power Shot A520 point and shoot. It was frustrating not knowing how to play around with the settings, so it kind of killed my creativity. So my pictures turned out pretty much like a normal tourist. Here's the one from Saturday:

16mm (equiv 114mm), f4.5, 1/400s, cropped slightly

• This is a good example of why the rule of thirds works. Too many people put the horizon in the middle of the photo.


• In deciding which third (the upper or lower) to put the horizon, decide which is more interesting, the foreground or sky. In this one it is obviously the foreground, since the sky was washed out.


• The sand was more interesting here because it was taken near sunset and had lots of shadows. If this was taken at noon it would not have been anywhere near as interesting.

Sunday's photo:

5.8mm (45mm equiv), f/4.0, 1/500s, cropped

• Sunday was cloudy, which I think helps with the colors in this photo.
• Since the focus is on the kids, I went for a crop that I've never tried before 5:3 widescreen.
• Not the best photo artistically, but it does sum up what I did for the weekend - play around with the kids on the beach! (That's my son Owen on the left.)