A December Morning

[Don Lacy]

About 6 months ago the town I live in spent over a million dollars to so call re nourish this section of beach by pumping tons of sand from offshore unto it. This completely covered these coquina rock formations turning this beach into a boring tourist destination. Now 6 months later after a few storms most of the sand is gone and this section of beach is now a nice little photo opportunity again. So my goal for the coming year is to photograph more of the interior of Florida concentrating on the lakes, rivers, pine scrub, and the Everglades but when you have a beach this nice five minuets from your house I am willing to bet you might see a few more images from here.

Canon 6D (I really like this little camera full frame for under 1,300.00 and while it might not have all the bells and whistles of the 5DMKIII it produces files on par with the 1DX just a perfect landscape camera) 16-35 f/$ IS, F/16at 13s for foreground, f/16 at 1.2s for sky, Manual mode, evaluative metered, ISO 100, two images hand blended, I did clean up a lot of footprints in the sand in post.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - Well obviously that was money well spent by the town:t3. Glad it is back to its photogenic state. This works quite well and you did a nice job blending. If it were mine I would tame the brightest highlights with a luminosity mask and would also slightly reduce the blues in the clouds, particularly on the lhs. Also be careful of halos at the edges of the rocks.

TFS,
Rachel

[Morkel Erasmus]

A beaut of a shot Don. Love the composition, colours and soft light.
Bet the taxpayers are unhappy about the waste of that money LOL
Rachel made some good points for small adjustments.

[Glennie Passier]

The wisdom of Councils! You can't beat Mother Nature! Images like this are good to show to councils every now and then to remind them of the beauty they need to protect and preserve.

Beautiful image Don. Lovely, not overdone colours. I love the sun-kissed coloured sand and the green moss.

[Don Lacy]

Thanks everyone for your comments here is a edited version taking Rachael's suggestions on the highlights and with a color correction to eliminate some of the blue color cast.

[Diane Miller]

Another fantastic image! Excellent blending of the exposures!

I think a small hurricane is just what you need here to finish the cleanup. What a gorgeous beach -- it should be designated as a protected place.

[Don Lacy]

Another fantastic image! Excellent blending of the exposures!

I think a small hurricane is just what you need here to finish the cleanup. What a gorgeous beach -- it should be designated as a protected place.
Only if it stays offshore I have ridden out two cat ones which where a pain but not really scary and one cat three that felt like a fright train rocking the house for four hours. It is not a fun experience being huddled in your bathroom wondering if your roof is going to stay on or if the storm surge is going to drown you and your family. But the real fun starts when your living in Florida during the summer without electricity for weeks on end. So yeah offshore would be nice.

[Jack Dean III]

Beautiful photo. Excellent job of blending the two exposures.

[David Cowling]

Lovely image. Great detail in those dark clouds. Colours in the RP work very well. Councils can't teach mother nature anything. Glad you have regained your photo opportunity.

[Don Railton]

Beautiful Don.. I especially like the cloud & sky.

[andresleon]

Hi Don,
Wonderful image. Really like the contrast between the lower clouds and the upper and more colorful ones in the sky. It gives my eyes lots of room to wonder and explore. I also like the total cleanliness of the sand.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Beautiful work Don. It is unbelievable how politicians waste the taxpayers money...did they really think the sand would not wash back out to sea...

[Don Lacy]

Beautiful work Don. It is unbelievable how politicians waste the taxpayers money...did they really think the sand would not wash back out to sea...
No they knew it, it usually takes a year to get to this point and another year to where they will replenish it. The amount of money collected from the bed taxes (taxes that are paid on hotel rooms) pay for the so called restoration. Florida has no state income tax so all revenue is generated through property taxes, sale taxes, and fees for government services.
The more tourist we have the larger the tax base so when you look at it that way keeping the beaches pristine to draw more tourist actually makes sense from their point of view. This section of beach on the weekends is packed while coral cove which is never replenish and has beautiful coquina rocks is hardly used by anyone but locals their loss our gain:S3: