Monday the 14th was when I started my daily Sunset Beach photo thing for real. It’s been a great experience in all respects: I get some gorgeous photos, plus accountability with a solid record of my photo times. In the last 2 weeks I’ve knocked about 15 minutes off my shooting time. Who would have thought I could take one thing in my life and use it to improve another thing? What a crazy world we live in!
It hasn’t been 100% smooth, though. For one, I need to go to bed earlier. For another, I need to not dawdle so much in the morning. But after literally years of fighting against bad habits and never making lasting progress, I feel I’m on my way!
I’m reading a book recommended to me, Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path To Truly Growing up. It’s good stuff, talking about various Buddhist virtues that even atheists like me can put in practice in their everyday life. One of those virtues is persistence: putting in the work every day, walking the path step by step, focusing on the journey and holding no expectations about the end result. I realise now this is what I’ve been doing for the last two years with my photography. Day by day I polished my skills but I didn’t try to plan anything—I definitely didn’t plan on taking daily Sunset Beach photos again, but there you go. Still, it’s all paying off now.
All these photos are absolutely fascinating. Tides match lunar days, right? And lunar days are a bit longer than solar days, which is why on January 23rd that little spit of rocks at the end of the closest chunk of beach was aaaaaalmost completely submerged at 7:39, while a day later more of it was visible, with highest tides coming apparently at 8:30.
The other thing that gets me about these photos? How much positive feedback they’ve gotten on Instagram. Most of them received at least one comment—a thumbs up or a bunch of heart emojis or something—and that’s new and frankly bewildering. I get that it’s a gorgeous vista, that’s why I chose it, but is that the whole story? Or maybe I should just hush my little overanalysing brain and self-doubts and enjoy this ride while it lasts?
Yes, I think that’s what I will do.
It’s not just Sunset Beach, though. Feast your eyes on a cyberpunk street downtown! A really grainy super wolf blood moon! Chairs in the rain! And a closer look at the king tides which… is still totally Sunset Beach. Ehh, whatever. I like the place.