One element of shooting the ocean that always irks me is the surf.  Now, I love the surf and I love to surf, but I had editing photos with the surf in them.  Because, save for the sun, the surf in wide shots of the beach ends up being the most colorless, white blob you will ever encounter.  Even snow has shadows.

The problem with white blobs (or any color blob, actually) is that they are distracting.  The human eye is a fantastically sensitive instrument.  No matter what a person is looking at, save for the sun, it will always have texture.  In real life, even the surf has bubbles, foam and spray to give it added depth.  However, none of that shows up in photos because it’s too bright.  If you adjust for the surf, everything else gets ridiculously dark.

This image perfectly captures what it was like being under that canopy of trees and I’m extremely happy that I managed to get that.  That said, the way the surf looks in this picture always bothers me.  It’s a true example of missing the forest for the waves.