Beach grass

I don't usually photograph plants or trees. But I wanted to try my luck at photographing the beach grass at Dewey Beach. So after watching a fantastic sunrise (the pictures of which I've shared in an earlier post) I walked on a footpath that cut between two enclosed areas of beach grass. I paused at one spot to photograph the grass-lined path that I had just walked up but I wasn't happy with the results. So I resumed my walk.

Stopping at a curve I picked out some tall grass silhouetted by the rising sun. A breeze was blowing and causing the stalks to wave back-and-forth. I aimed the camera towards the sun, which I knew the camera would pick a fast shutter speed -- fast enough to freeze the grass. I briefly thought about spot-metering so the grass would truly be silhouetted but I thought I'd just leave it in matrix-metering and see what would happen. I went to full zoom on the 18-200mm, focusing on the grass, throwing the background out of focus, and compressing the perspective.

Then I waited for the breeze to die down a little so the grass wasn't moving around so much. When it calmed down I took one shot.

This is what I got:

 

I guess it came out like I'd imagined it, although I wasn't expecting the overall golden tone. Sometimes I'm not sure I'll get, so this was a nice surprise and part of the fun of taking pictures.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom lens at 200mm; program auto; camera chose shutter speed of 1/640 second at f/13; ISO 200; auto white balance; normal JPG.)