A Walk on the Beach

I will wrap up 2025 with one final post from today’s walk at Harding’s Beach in Chatham MA. A couple friends, Kate and I decided to take our dogs, Fergus and Finn, for a walk on the beach to wear them out and to stretch our own legs. As usual, I brought my camera along “just in case”. I was not actually expecting to take any photographs that I would want to keep, but it always seems that when I do not bring the camera is when there are interesting photographic opportunities. As we started our walk, the midday sun was coming from the water meaning that everything over the water was going to be severely backlit and have harsh overhead lighting. This is extremely challenging lighting for bird photography. I photographed this American Herring Gull looking directly towards the sun. The wind was blowing hard, so the water was dazzling from the reflected sunlight. This photo was mostly black and white right out of the camera, but I removed the touches of color, darkened the sky a bit, and brightened the gull to get this image. It reminds me a bit of a gull flying in outer space with the surface of the earth below.

Here is a different example of a backlit American Herring Gull. What I find most interesting in this photo is the sharp texture of the reflected light in the wave versus the soft reflections in the more distant water.

This Ring-billed Gull photo was taken slightly before the gull flew in front of the reflected sun. As a result, the photo has some color to it. In photography, the round balls made by light sources that are in the distance well beyond the focal plane are called bokeh balls. A bokeh ball background is a fairly classic abstract background for a photo.

In this photo of a Ring-billed Gull, the sun is now off my left shoulder creating an intense blue to the water and lighting up the face of the gull. This set of four gull photos shows how much similar photo compositions can vary by just shifting the direction of the light source and the angle of the gull relative to the waterline.

While there was not much bird variety on display, I was delighted to see this Snow Bunting very early in our walk. I had seen two Snow Buntings earlier this month also here at Harding’s Beach, but they were flying away from me in the distance, so the photos were terrible. This is a vast improvement.

On the shoreline, there was the occasional Sanderling walking among the gulls.

When we got to “the cut” where the Oyster River and Stage Harbor exit to Nantucket Sound, I saw this Long-tailed Duck fly by. I like the buoy in the background.

Part of the reason I was not expecting to take good bird photos was that our dogs were running up and down the beach scaring any birds that might be nearby. This is our younger dog Fergus burning off some of his excess 2-year-old energy.

Running was not simply for the young, but also the young at heart. Finn is 9 years old but enjoying the beach every bit as much as Fergus.

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you all a wonderful 2026!