Fine Art Seascape Photography
When working on my fine art landscape and seascape photography I am always on the lookout for interesting items to place in the foreground of a photograph. A photograph is only two dimensional, so to help convey a feeling of depth a photographer will often try to incorporate some object of interest in the foreground.
Sea Shell by the Sea Shore – Fort Wetherill, Rhode Island
The weather in Rhode Island today was once again cloudy, gloomy and overcast. The ample cloud cover provided soft even light, so I thought that the day might not be a total loss with regards to getting some photography in. I packed my camera into the car, printed out some really bad directions from the internet, and my wife and I headed out for a day of exploring.
For the last several years I have wanted to explore Fort Wetherill, which is an old Coast Artillery site dating back to the late 1800’s, and today seemed like the perfect opportunity. After much exploring of the fort we happened upon a little section of beach. I took a series of seascape photographs of Narragansett Bay, as well as the cliffs behind me. Overall I was pleased with the photographs that I had taken, and was ready to move on to another part of the park. As I started up the path to the parking lot, something caught my eye, and I turned back to explore a little corner of the beach that I had all but ignored.
Laying on the rocky beach, hidden from view by a small bush, was the largest sea shell that I have even seen. It was enormous, and very beautiful! I knew right away that I did not want to make a photograph of just the shell, that I was going to create something grander. This was the foreground object that I had been looking for all day!
After checking the beach over I decided that getting down low on my belly with a wide angle lens would give me the vantage point that I desired. The end of my lens was only a foot away from the tip of the sea shell, and I was able to align myself so that the rocks and small outcroppings of land created several layers that helped to create a sense of depth in the photograph. I used the rule of thirds to place the shell in the lower right corner of the frame, and the horizon along the horizontal line that divides the upper third of the photograph from the lower two thirds. With my composition dialed in, it was time to set the exposure and create a photograph.
The final result is the seascape photograph that you see here. You can see and purchase a print of this photograph, as well as many other seascape and landscape photographs that I have created in my Fine Art Print Gallery.