Stretching

I’ve been working on taking images that are outside my comfort zone. Most of the images I shoot in this area are beach landscapes. This time, I decided to try something different—a more nautical scene. My favorite time to shoot is at/before sunrise, and I went out then for this photo. This was taken at a marina, in Cape May, that overlooks the commercial fishing boats at the Lobster House.

​It was a cold, winter morning, and there wasn’t the slightest breeze in the air. That was great for reflections. I put the buoy in the bottom of the frame (to add foreground interest). I use this composition tool a lot in my photographs. The sky had color, and it reflected in the water, but I can’t decide 

whether the image would have benefited from clouds. I don’t know if it would have cluttered the image too much or not. There already is a lot going on in the photo because of the reflections.

I usually like clouds because they catch the color in the sky. In this photo, though, there was a lot of color--from purple to orange. They work well together because they are complimentary colors. This is a composition tool that I don’t tend to focus on very often—simply for the fact that I think all colors in nature work together. Perhaps if I didn’t work with landscapes so much, I’d pay closer attention to colors. I did however notice, in this instance, how the colors worked.

I chose to shoot this image in a vertical (or portrait) orientation. It wasn’t a hard choice because there was a pilon that would have cut a horizontal (landscape) orientation image in half. So, to avoid it, I simply flipped my camera vertically and eliminated the pole entirely. The traps with the buoy are actually right up against the pole.
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Again, as I stated, I am trying to push myself outside my comfort zone, and I have. I’m sure I’ll revisit this location again in the future to continue to try to improve upon this image. ​

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