On the Beach #28

[Riley Smith]

I spent the day on the beach yesterday. It was a very nice and warm day with hardly a breath of air blowing. I had overdressed because you never know how it is going to be there, so I had to immediately shuck clothes. Then I gathered the camera and sat on the porch looking over the water. That is good for the soul but it was very warm in the sunshine. There was a strange haze on the water and I couldn't see the islands offshore. I've never seen it exactly like that so maybe it is a sign of the winter storm coming.

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It was very quiet and I had come to work on some handrails. Almost immediately upon sitting we got buzzed by two low-level C-130s. They circle out by the islands and do training runs up the river and use the mouth of the river down the street as an entrance point over the land. Always impressive. I got one pic and then enjoyed the sub I'd brought for dinner. (Note: This is the South, and the three meals are breakfast, dinner, and supper).

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There wasn't much happening on the water. It was low tide and the bird life takes a break then. The pelicans were all gathered on a bar at the end of the river channel about a mile away. I did see two boats, one drifting the river channel out front in the current. A tactic I've wanted to try myself. Eventually I gathered my get-up-and-go and went to work on the handrails. It wasn't long before the gnats drove me off. (Noseeums). They can get really vicious on a warm winter day so I hung around in the shade of the wing porch near the live oak. Sometimes the warblers are there but not yesterday and I just enjoyed the view waiting on the gnats to abate. Which was only partly successful.

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I finally finished installing the spindles and put up all the tools, swatting gnats all the way. Shannon is having a wedding shower soon and the handrail on the entrance steps had to be repaired. We use the old house for such occasions and gatherings. And when the world becomes too much and you just have to go somewhere quiet and beautiful and forget about it all. It's been a balm for the soul for a long time.

I couldn't go there and not fish, so I grabbed the new rod and made a few casts. There has been rain upriver and the water is the wrong color, so no bites. That wasn't the purpose anyway, just being in the sunshine was uplifting. Just before sundown the water took on a strange ethereal feeling from a layer of fog/mist just above the surface. It dispersed the bright sunshine and made it hard to look at but I knew that a broken layer of clouds was going to make pretty colors as the sun sank. And it did.

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[Doug SC]

I have a no-see-um mesh head net in a pocket in the crown of my wide brim sunhat. Enjoyed the photos. Great composition and lighting with the sunset.

[Riley Smith]

The no wind situation is not fun when the little flying monsters are seeking blood. It wasn't TOO bad, just enough to be a PITA. I've been fishing in the marsh when they ran me out. A literal wall of insects. You'd think that after several below freezing nights that the bugs would be minimized but you'd be wrong. I even noticed several butterflies too!

[Doug SC]

I have beach camped at undeveloped SC coasts from kayaks in all seasons. they can be bad any time of the year. Those barrier islands and marshes are biting insect factories. If you have an offshore breeze or no wind and it is warm enough then you're in your tent from dark to dawn. Onshore wind is a blessing as are a beach fire, Thermacell, head net and DEET. Baby oil in your hair and on your skin will help keep the no-see-ums off for the most part but not the mosquitoes.

[Riley Smith]

Avon Skin So Soft used to be the best noseeum repellent there was. I haven't used any in years though and they may have changed the formula but back when I tramped the marshes regularly, it was the best. Woe to you if the fish are biting and they descend on you! In reality, I rarely used chemical defenses because I'm so used to bugs, living in the world capital. Only when it gets to a transfusion level do I get really concerned. It has to get pretty bad before I'll go there.

One of those head nets saved me on the FL 120 last year. Someone in their brilliance, had decided to park everyone near a strip of march grass when there was a perfectly good island of nothing but sand 100 yds away. It's an easy error to make, granted. The bugs were TERRIBLE. I covered every inch of skin I could and put on the head net. The bugs weren't biting all that much but made me itch from all their crawling and buzzing antics until I got the net and clothes on. I think I slept about 2 hours total.

[Captain Kidd]

That sunset pic is great!

[Riley Smith]

You might like this one too! (I took a LOT of pictures).

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[Captain Kidd]

I took this pic on Douglas Lake in east TN a few years ago. A beautiful sunrise with the morning mist and a flock of geese flying across the scene. Just my cell phone so not the best clarity plus it's cropped.

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[Jim B., CD-25]

Nice essay, Riley - I felt like I was there with you.  Appreciate the images to go along with it.  Sunrises and sunsets can be colorful here in the desert, but it isn't the same as seeing the sun come up or go down over the water.

[Riley Smith]

The desert has its own charm too. I'm glad that I was able to see it like I did. And I'm glad you enjoyed the wool gathering.

And a note to all camera users....you can do so much with today's editing programs it's amazing. For instance I cropped and changed the pelicans a little because they were so far away. And the airplane too...just a little. Mostly to get rid of the date. The sunset is all real.

Almost all the time I work in automatic mode for a couple of reasons. One its easy and two I'm not into programming the thing just to change it on the next shot. I will say that the old Canon had amazing zoom power in a small package. In the camera world zoom is like horsepower to a gearhead. There is NEVER enough. This Sony doesn't have as much but it has immensely better glass in it with Zeiss lenses. And it is a much better camera. But you can get awesome pics from a cell phone as Dale showed!

To get better, you have to do it A LOT. I take thousands of pictures and most of them get trashed for one reason or another. Getting that perfect shot to show up in a little LCD screen is HARD. But you get to where you KNOW it when it happens. And there are times that it just isn't happening. Light in photography is like wind to a sailor, it is almost never perfect but you can work with it.