This was one of those “making lemonade” experiences.  I went to the Tongue Point tide pools with images of colorful star fish and sea urchins dancing in my mind….I found neither.  What I encountered were a lot of mussels and kelp.  After talking myself off the proverbial ledge and not declaring “this place sucks”, I hunkered down and started to really look.

Instead of looking for “stuff” (i.e. star fish), I started focusing on shapes and colors.  When I encountered glare I could not polarize out of the image, I tried to see it as “white” and work it into my abstracts.  I stopped cursing the kelp, and started to look more closely at the patterns patterns.  I tried to see beauty in the shapes and patterns of the mussles, rather than seeing an eye sore.

While, the image with the purple sponge is not an abstract, I add it out of respect to the marine biologist who was so excited she insisted a picture was needed.