The lunatic is on the beach

It's been a while! I am in the ongoing process of recovering from an injury, which has put a damper on my photographic efforts. Earlier this week, however, I was able to squeeze out a trip to Larrabee State Park just south of Bellingham to catch a sunset and then the setting of the full moon the next morning. I like doing photography at Larrabee because it provides interesting subject matter beyond the mere western views: interesting rock formations for foregrounds, and views of islands to add to the background.

As usual, the images here are the unedited JPEGs. In all cases, they'll need some fine-tuning of the white balance, in addition to some cleaning up - dust spots on the lens were particularly prominent in this trip's compositions. Additionally, all of these are single exposures. The key to doing it this way in moon photography is monitoring the moon and sun both. In this instance, the moon set just after sunrise; thus, the moon was still up with just enough light in the sky to make the exposure settings all work. A side benefit is the cool sky color at sunrise.

My most dramatic image of the moon came right before it set. F/22. This is the best aspect ratio for the composition (cropped to 4x8), although something along the lines of 4x6 could also work.

The next two are wider views from just a bit earlier. They're similar, with the second being a wider focal length with more foreground; I'm not sure which I like better. F/22 in both cases.

Here's one of the sunset the previous evening, with the park's interesting rock formations in the foreground. I've had good luck with horizontal sunset shots here before, but it's nice to have a vertical one as well. I believe the land form in the background is Lummi Island. F/22 produced the rays that you see coming from the sun; partially obscuring it behind the rock also helped enhance the rays (by making it even more of a point source of light) while reducing flares.

Finally, a couple other beach landscapes from early in the morning, both at f/22 again. I think the first one in particular has an interesting composition, and with some judicious lighting and color adjustments would work fairly well.