Testing... 1, 2, 3 ...

(ok, this is my first post with pictures... let's see how it goes! Should be interesting, eh?)

On the way to Burlington on Thursday, I noticed that the exit sign for Stanwood had "Cama State Park" on it; I was a little stumped... I have been to the state park out on Camano, but didn't think that it was called "Cama Beach." Interesting.

The next day, I was chatting with a co-worker that lives in the Stanwood-area and he told me that Cama is a new park, brand new. Oh really? A little bit of googling and I found out that it is Washington's newest state park in 10 years. (intrigued are you? want to read more? check it out: http://www.cwb.org/CamaBeach.htm)

I was intrigued. The combination of something new, a beach nearby, a sunny day & a chance to practice taking pictures in manual mode meant that I headed to Cama Beach as soon as possible. Saturday afternoon. All of these shots were taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. It is a compact, 6 megapixel, digital camera. I also used a Sunpak 52 mm circular polarizer. AND, get this, I usually compose the shot using the LCD, but found myself using the old-school view finder. It was easier to meter that way.

Enjoy.

The picture to the left was taken at the top of the park; the roofs & chimneys are the rental cabins that the park operates. Yes, I know that they plants in the foreground are probably weeds, but they are pretty weeds. The mountainous looking hill in the background is Whidbey Island. According to my friends at Wikipedia, the body of water between Camano & Whidbey Islands is the Saratoga Passage.

Now I am on the beach. A beautiful day, no? I loved this gigantic piece of driftwood and ended up taking about 10 pictures of it from different angles. I liked this view the most, because the kids in the back have some kinda goofy stances and you can see the way that the shoreline wraps around the frame. Plus,with the sun behind me shadows were minimized.



As you can see, the shore is quite, well, clammy. Like a typical Washington coastal beach, there are tons of rocks on the shoreline. However, Cama also has a bunch of broken clam shells... not too cozy, but kinda cool. According to a Seattle PI article, the shells are "left over from centuries of use by native tribes." Neat. (If only I had a wide angle lens; then this shot would be even cooler.)

Although I didn't fully explore the beach on this trip, I am looking forward to heading back there again soon. As I headed back to my car via the fabulously maintained trail (um probably should be because it is new, but anyway....) I saw that the afternoon sun was shining through the trees and beautifully highlighting a very large rock. I liked it; hope you do, too.

Hey, its the end of the post. You made it! Thanks for reading this stuff! In case you are interested in reading a bit more about Cama Beach, check out some articles from: the Times & PI.