If you listened to Episode 96 of The Stop Down Photography Podcast, you heard me share the story of a day’s worth of photographic highs and lows. That story ended with me on the beach at Scripps Reserve - a definite high of the day. White, puffy clouds adorned the San Diego skies. The tide hit its low point in the late afternoon, and I sought out beaches with longer expanses of wet sand. My goal for the afternoon - capture reflections of the sky in a wet sheen of beach.

The Scripps Pier at the reserve is always a draw for my camera, but on this day, I would not be spending my time there. I walked north past Scripps Pier, seeking out a patch of beach for my envisioned photo. I did stop to take a quick snap of a mural painted on a retaining seawall.

The tide was not yet at its lowest point. I wandered among the rocks, forecasting what areas would empty out at low tide. Of course, as landscape photographers often do, I got absorbed in the landscape and could not pass up the opportunity to capture the surf swirling around the rocks at the shoreline. I was particularly intrigued by an angular rock pointing back toward shore. I perched on another rock and set my tripod up high, angling the lens downward. The higher angle helped separate the foreground and midground elements.

The afternoon pressed on, the winds off the ocean were strong, pushing the clouds to the land and over the sandstone bluffs of Scripps Reserve. The tide had rolled out as well, leaving behind that wet sheen of beach I was looking for. Every few minutes the composition changed thanks to the continually changing position of the clouds in the sky.

The sun had sunk even lower in the sky. I worked my way south back toward Scripps Pier. The late afternoon amber light brought out the detail and texture in the rock formations that peppered the beach.

After photographing a few of the rocks, I sat down on one of them to watch the sunset. The sun and clouds put on a little show complete with sunbeams and a pleasing warm-cool palette. A pretty great backdrop to an afternoon at the ocean.