Beach life

We are blessed in this part of the Ireland - lots and lots of beautiful sandy beaches all around.  In the summertime - as I have complained about before (Ed: here we go again) - we get visitors...car-loads of them.   The visitors come partly because of the beaches and while I'm sure the local traders are happy about that, I'm not.  I like beaches to myself - or almost - and thankfully for about 9 months of the year things are just dandy that way.  Unfortunately we're coming into the 3 months of the year when things get rather busier.  Roll on September, eh?!

These shots were taken a while back at the White Rocks, just outside Portrush.  This post should have been titled Beach - Still Life, but I thought that was way too poncy for a title.  Anyway, here's a rock for you:

A rock

Almost a 3D look to this one, or is it 2D - or maybe it looks like it's just floating.  Anyway, the rock was looking all lovely and weathered and everything, half-submerged in the sand as it was.  It came up rather well on film I think.

Sand, rocks and some grass

The rocks in this last shot are more typical of the ones you get around the White Rocks area - and I rather liked the wee bit of grass growing beside them. Quite dark sand on this part of the beach - there is a lot of basalt around, as well as limestone.

I tried to go out to the White Rocks again recently, but was thwarted not by the weather as such, more by the effects of coastal erosion.  Seems the storms we'd had over the winter had washed away a lot of sand and access to the beach was nigh impossible - well, completely impossible for the likes of me who are a bit unsteady on their feet.  I did see a couple of pheasants though - a male and a female - and got very close to them, so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.  No snaps of the birds, though - I was in the car at the time.  Besides, capturing birds with a 35mm lens is pretty impossible - unless they are half-tame like the robin that my mother feeds cheese to every day:

Mother's cheese-eating robin