From some distant shore…

Seen on the beach at Ha’ena State Park; Kauai, Hawaii:

From some distant shore

I’ll freely admit that I posed my model in this shot — we found it laying in the sand a few feet away from where I took this shot.  I thought it’d make an interesting composition, so moved it over to this one little footprint-free patch of sand and waited for the sun to peek out through the overcast.  I love the look of a “castaway” coconut, trying to make a life in its new home.  I’m still debating whether I shouldn’t have brushed the sand off the coconut husk, though…

On the beach

At the ruins of Tulúm in Quintana Roo, Mexico:

On the beach

You can’t actually walk on this beach (it’s reserved for nesting sea turtles), but a trail through the site runs right past it — and it makes a great foreground for shots like this! The only real problem is that trash tends to wash up after storms, so you need to clone it out of your shot (since, obviously, you can’t walk out and get it off the beach).

Not your ordinary tide pool

In a post over on the old blog, I talked a bit about (and shared some video from) the green sand beach near South Point, on the big island of Hawaii. If you find yourself “in the neighborhood” but can’t (or don’t want to) hike to the beach, you do have alternatives.

Not your ordinary tide pool

This isn’t “the” green sand beach, this is a little tide pool about a mile away — but it’s managed to collect some of its neighbor’s sand just the same. It only covers about 200 square feet (so 20″ish” square meters), but it’s considerably closer to the trailhead.