Photo of the Day: Ocean Meditation

Last week, I took this picture of a woman sitting peacefully as waves crashed in around her at Muir Beach. I wasn't paying attention to my settings and took the shot with the aperture too small resulting in an effective sensor sensitivity of ISO 1250. I used a long lens, but the depth that the photo covers relative to me was such that I probably could have gotten away with a setting of f/5.6, so my sensitivity could have been ISO 320 or even ISO 200 leaving me with a less noisy image. At web resolutions, this isn't a problem, but I like my photos as high quality as possible…

Handheld, 1/500 sec at f/16 on ISO 1250, 70-200mm f/2.8 lens

This photo does a better job capturing the scale of some of the waves crashing in on her location, but she's harder to see without the white of the splash providing contrast.

Handheld, 1/500 sec at f/16 on ISO 2200, 70-200mm f/2.8 lens