Sani­bel Beach — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Sani­bel Beach

I’m back from a few days spent on Sani­bel Beach, so no more re-​runs for a while.

This was a nice break for me, since I’ve been work­ing prac­ti­cally every day since Novem­ber. There is always some­thing to do, but it even­tu­ally catches up with you and leads to burnout. Of course, there’s noth­ing like a few days on a Sani­bel beach to cure burnout. That’s espe­cially true in the July/​August time of year because it’s just too damn hot and swel­ter­ing to do much of anything.

This beach is a per­fect exam­ple. I woke up before sun­rise to go down to the beach to take some shots. Even at this early time of day, sweat was rolling off my fore­head before I hit the sand. The humid­ity just draws it out of you. Of course, I sup­pose that’s prefer­able to bak­ing in the dry heat of a desert. In any case, this kind of weather directs you toward relax­ing activ­i­ties instead of exertion.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t take many pho­tos on this trip. I just wanted to relax and unwind. Not that I didn’t think of plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties. Before I left, I checked out some local mod­els to hire for some lifestyle shots, thought about try­ing to do some shore­bird pho­tos and looked for other scenic loca­tions for travel pho­tos. All of those were pos­si­bil­i­ties and I even­tu­ally ruled all of them out.

When I hit the Sani­bel beach and looked at the shore­birds, I real­ized that these are the same birds that crap on my dri­ve­way every day. Not really some­thing exotic for me. The heat & humid­ity lead me to decide not to call the model. I think we’d both have been mis­er­able. As for scenery, it’s a mixed bag. At the south­ern tip of the Sani­bel beach is the world’s ugli­est light­house. It’s just a metal mon­stros­ity. As much as I’d love to have some nice light­house pho­tos, this one doesn’t make the cut.

Other areas, includ­ing Cap­tiva, had some nice scenery. Unfor­tu­nately, things are cramped and there wasn’t a place to park. Many resorts have signs warn­ing that they’ll tow cars not belong­ing to guests. There are some paid park­ing spots, includ­ing one at Red­fish Pass where I got some nice sun­set shots a cou­ple of years ago. There was also a large barge with some dredg­ing equip­ment right smack in the mid­dle of the scene, along with a few ten­der boats. Sun­set over a rusty barge? I passed.

There were no prob­lems that couldn’t be over­come (except the ugli­ness of that light­house). The sim­ple truth is that I just needed to relax and the ele­ments served as reminders. For the entire trip, I only took about 75 pho­tos. Maybe a few more if you count my iPhone pho­tos of an Oreo Bliz­zard at Dairy Queen. I can’t visit Sani­bel with­out a stop for one of those.

Now that I’m back from my Sani­bel beach trip, there’s plenty of work to do and pho­tos to shoot. Every now and then, it’s good to put all those things aside and get a fresh perspective.