Why is it that beaches look so good in black and white?
I never would have guessed until I saw J. R. Smith’s photostream on Flickr. He lives on the northern California coast and photographs the beach in black and white all the time.
This beach isn’t in California — it’s in northwest Ireland. on a peninsula in County Sligo called Rosses Point.
Rosses Point is a peninsula with this beach, a harbor, and a small town. Famed poet William Butler Yeats spent his summers here when he was a boy.
We spent about an hour exploring this beach, and in that time dark clouds parted for full sun, only to yield to gray overcast. The changing sky is a lot of why we stayed so long: new light brought out new and interesting things to photograph.
My color photos of this beach do not at all show the scalloping in the sand.
We had other places we wanted to see this day so we reluctantly moved on.
Nikon N2000, 35mm f/2.8 AI Nikkor, Kodak T-Max 400
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