Living in a beautiful place like Maine has its own photographic perks. Very often simple rocky beach subjects could make pretty impressive compositions. Maine’s rocky coast, with a variety of textured rocks and formations provide numerous photo opportunities from what might appear to be very simple situations.
These two images were photographed in Higgins Beach close to South Portland, Maine, just before the sun went below the horizon, within about 15 minutes of each other. I used a ultra-wide angle lens, the Nikon 14-24 mm at 14 mm f/11 on a tripod to capture both these images.
The low tide in the afternoon exposed the coastal rocks and the receding water left puddles of water. The low angle of the sun rays during sunset helped accentuate the textures in the sand.
The lens is well known among professional photographers as one of the best ultra wide lenses available today that produces extremely sharp, distortion-less and flare-less images while preserving all the colors and details.
While the setting sun adds a lot of drama, it also creates a huge exposure difference between the sky and the foreground. Normally one would use a ND filter but with the Nikon 12-24 mm lens you can shoot without any filters.
The images are presented as they were shot with minor tweaks in Adobe Lightroom. The exposure balance, which was probably about 6 – 7 stops, was achieved in Adobe Lightroom. You can find more such amazing places in our Photography ebooks.