I'm not shy to admit that I'm quite particular about certain things. Some may call it perfectionism, some OCD, and others might just call me crazy. But normally, when I post on this blog, I tend to write all the text together and follow it with photos. All those photos are posted in an order that illustrates the story. However, today, for this post, I'm going to switch it up and write bits and pieces between the photos - hence the perfectionism/OCD/crazy thing. I like continuity, I like symmetry, I like consistancy... this new order of things is putting all that in the bin. And that, folks, is crazy to me. A change in routine, ahhhh!! Anywayyyyyyy... moving on to the actual point of this post now, but for whatever reason, I felt the need to type out this whole first disclaimer paragraph. Y'all probably don't care. Right. Moving on.
Yesterday, we went to Clearwater Beach, just out of Tampa. Believe it or not, this was the first real beach trip since I arrived in Florida.. a whole MONTH AGO. So it was about damn time for the beach, wouldn't you agree? (I'm going to pretend I can see everyone reading this vigorously nodding their heads.) First thing I noticed about this beach - the sand. I mean, I've been to some really gorgeous beaches in my time, but I can't think of a single one where I literally exclaimed how white and clean the sand was as soon as I stepped foot on it.
Seriously though, that sand. Just look at how WHITE it is!!
Obviously the first thing you do when you go to the beach is crack open the beers. The second is act like complete fools and take an embarrassingly large amount of photos to prove it. It goes without saying that the crème de la crème is then posted to Instagram/Facebook/MySpace(HAHA, jk)/Twitter.
And then of course there are the "catch-us-mid-jump" photos. Of which there are always tons of fails before a good one comes along. Kind of like selfies, but way more worth it. But then maybe it was just my mom's bad because then this girl was like "would you like me to take one with all of you in it?" and she did and GOT IT ON THE FIRST TRY. On my intimidating DSLR. Props, random girl. Mom, fail.
We all felt pretty good about that jump pic.
Eventually it was nearing sunset and inevitably cooling off. The rest of my group was getting a bit chilly and I really wanted to capture the sunset from the beach, so whilst they took the stuff back to the car, I moseyed along down to the pier, snapping some photos as the sun lowered itself to the horizon.
I decided to walk up onto the pier overhead, where I discovered vendors selling their wares during a "Sunset Market". I walked along through all of them as far as I could down the pier, until I reached a point where you had to pay to go further. I settled for leaning against the railing to take pictures of the sun dipping below the water, then scurried back down to the sandy beach for the remaining sunset photos.
I met back up with my group watching a unicycling street performer, and we wandered back to the cars to head to a late dinner before going back home. I really hope I get to take some more beach sunset photos because I had so much fun taking these pictures. And of course, any day that's a beach day is fine by me!
