May 2022 – Lawrence Pallant Photography

When I first saw the tree-like image, Patterns in the Sand by Adam Gibbs, taken along the BC coast of Canada, I wished I could be there to find such designs. About a year later, I was listening to a photography podcast in which I was introduced to the work of Huibo Hou. She spoke of a photo project in which she was capturing images like this along the Southern California coast. She titled her collection Nature’s Botanical Sand Art. It was then that I realized these patterns could be found a short distance from my own home and I set about exploring the shore. I had been walking over them for years.

Here is a small collection of what I found over several visits.

Here is more of my current collection of Nature’s Sand Art.

And now for something different. This spring I spent the day at the San Diego Zoo learning some camera techniques that helped with photographing animals. Particularly, I learned how to use Automatic ISO with a minimum shutter speed. I wanted to keep my shutter speed high enough to capture moving subjects, sometimes in low light or shadows. I was using a 100-400 lens so I chose a minimum shutter speed of 1/400 sec. Enough with the technical. Here are some photos.

My favorites from the day were these shots of the Sleepy Flamingo and another with just its feathers.

The photo below was taken earlier in the day, when the light harsher. I often like to find dark backgrounds to make the subject stand out as with the two photos below.

I spend the bulk of the day with various apes. It was especially moving to watch one woman converse through the glass with one of the gorillas. She was a regular visitor to the zoo and knew this particular gorilla over several years. She was showing it a photo of another gorilla and talking to it through the glass. The gorilla was intent with eyes on this woman and her photo. I didn’t get of photo of her, but here are some others.

To see more from this outing, click here.

Month: May 2022

Nature’s Sand Art

Day at the Zoo