I don't normally enter contests (honestly, I'm not sure why) but I went out on a limb this year and sent in two photos to the 2017 Marine Wildlife and Seascape Photo Contest. Having lived on the California coast for a year, and traveled to the coast regularly for years prior, I have thousands of marine wildlife photos and just as many seascapes.
My first submission was of a Long-billed Curlew on the beach in Morro Bay titled "Into the Setting Sun".
If you've never seen the beaches of Morro Bay on the central coast of California, you're missing out. While they may look like any other beaches in California 80% of the time, there is a particular period of time in the morning, and evening, when the beach comes alive and turns highly reflective. It can be so intense during golden hour when photos like this become possible. It can be so intense. For whatever reason this particular bird paused on the shoreline and held a pose for me for a short while. I felt it was fairly magnificent. :)
My second submission to the contest has been one of my favorites from Morro Bay for quite some time, titled "Afternoon Delight".
Sea Otters in California are a fairly rare sight pretty much everywhere outside of aquariums, and Morro Bay, where there is an amazing group of them located just off the shoreline, nestled neatly in the bay. My morning routine for nearly a year was to visit them during my downtime and in that period I accumulated thousands of photos of them. This particular otter seemed to recognize me though, and would frequently move into my line of sight, closer to shore than any of the others.
That could just be in my head but I didn't mind either way, it was always appreciated. On this particular day, I had visited later in the afternoon and found that he was having a bit of an afternoon snack. As he had previously, he moved pretty close to my position on the rocks and allowed me to take a few photos.
Thank you for reading and viewing. As always, your comments and votes are appreciated tremendously. :)
If you wanted to learn more about the contest, you can find the website here: https://oceanconservancy.org/2017-marine-wildlife-seascape-photo-contest/
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