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@jamesstaddon (and @morganwriter1gmail-com might want to hear this too)…More to my earlier story… I was shooting on the beach during the slight sunset about an hour before this one (I was playing with my brand-new ND filters and brand-new aluminum tripod I got as a graduation gift) and this gull landed not far from me. I had my 18-200mm attached, so I frantically unscrewed the filter on the front, grabbed the first attached photo (which didn’t turn out sharp, unfortunately), and BOOM!!! It didn’t take too long for me to realize my life was more important than my photo of a gull… (aluminum tripod + huge flat beach + approaching thunderstorm = yeah, get inside NOW) so no on the beach reflections. It was still raining, and I didn’t want to wander far from our beach house (the thunder had subsided, though).
So… I skimmed through my other photos, and unfortunately, I didn’t really consider that the sky might be more interesting than the dune grass. I have one set of bracketed RAW + JPEG images (haven’t totally convinced me yet to go pure RAW, @jamesstaddon, but you’re helping) where the sky is more emphasized as opposed to the foreground. It’s attached below.
I was actually reading a photography article where they suggested spritzing some water on the lens to get those out of focus “bubbles” on the lens. Mine were purely natural, though. I was wet, my camera was wet, my lens was wet… it was great. I think the effect looks kind of neat, when done rightly.