Canon EOS 60D ,Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
1/640s f/11.0 at 130.0mm iso400

On last Saturday’s walk around La Jolla Cove I was looking for interesting photos, but didn’t feel inspired by anything that I hadn’t photographed before. Finally, I saw these patterns that look like a landscape from another planet, but actually are in the sandstone cliffs right by the beach.

I hadn’t noticed these shapes before, and I imagine they might be transient, perhaps formed by just the right tide conditions and the right amount of salt water left to evaporate. I had to wait a bit for the sun to emerge from behind thin clouds to give better contrast, and in the meantime tried to visualize a good composition.

In the end, I still cropped the photo somewhat to improve the composition and enhanced the contrast and saturation a bit to make the photo more interesting, but it had to start to keeping one’s eyes open for something unusual.