red seaweed

i spent the final hour of daylight today exploring the seaweeds exposed at low tide...the tide had turned and was coming in but it was still pretty low - the full moon was just a few days ago!  and because the tide was so low during this hour in which i love to shoot i returned to a place where at a mid-tide 8 days ago i had explored - too briefly - some small patches of red seaweed that caught the setting sun :) the state of the tide today revealed some rocks further out covered with it!  under overcast cloudy skies or even in the middle of the day the color of the seaweed appears much dirtier and drabber and thus makes them harder to spot.  the timing was perfect and the tide was low enough to allow me to get this close in my boots.  the window of time to get a nice long exposure water-over-the-rock-with-red-seaweed-in-the-light image is limited by the speed of, in this case, the incoming tide...a few minutes before the water hadn't reached the rock, and a few minutes later and the rock and the seaweed are submerged.  and, this is obvious but also integral to the shoot, time exposures take time (!!) thus limiting the number of shots able to be taken during that short period.  this exposure time was 2.5 seconds, so the next decision is to choose when in the wave/water action to press the shutter which determines the frame of action caught in the exposure.  waves are complicated movements, and can change direction and size quickly, or not, as the case might be...each wave is different as it washes over the rock and the light travels with it!  this was the second shot i took.  i liked the bubble :)