Summery Monochrome Monday

Summertime is definitely an enjoyable time of year. You get to, for the most part, be outside far more often and do a lot more different stuff than you do at other times of year. There is definitely enjoyment in the air; be it from animals, people or bugs. Everything is out and about! That means some awesome photography opportunities for me!

This week is a little bit of a blend of other years for some black and white photos, with a mixture of different places that I've been. I'm working on getting the most recent photos from our various journeys we've taken over the past several weeks uploaded to my laptop so I can sort through them and get the pictures cataloged for what types of posts I want to generate, but in the meantime I wanted to reflect back on some good summertime photos! So many of the photos are of some type of water, could you have guessed?! :D I love water!

The ocean is definitely our go-to spot in the summer, though we've been trying to branch out a little bit to different places! I think we tend to go to the ocean more because the weather is hot, and where we live the ocean water is pretty cold. Where our favorite beach is, the water temperature is still in the 50's and it won't reach the 70's until August if we are lucky, but September most times. This means that the beach, when it's nice and hot, is pretty refreshing. You get hot and just go into the water to cool off! I know that it was wonderful to be in an area that's got warm ocean water, but there's a bit of a different refreshment when you jump in an ice-cold ocean when it's super hot out haha.

I love this spot we went to, a restaurant was on a pier that was sticking out into the ocean. It made for some cool pilings and things in the sand! The barnacles were all over these things, combined with the fish and things around. We didn't try to venture out beneath the pier here lol I didn't know what we'd end up getting stuck on or something, or step on something crazy that hurt us so we just admired it from a distance.

What would summertime be without the mountains though?! They are definitely an absolutely beautiful place to be in the summer. The higher elevation means that the air is hot, but not as hot as it is down in the lower elevation and near the beaches. It's also got some great wind! The lakes are certainly cooler than other places which makes it refreshing to just stand at the waters edge with your feet in there or go swimming if you are brave enough. I know that there aren't any fish in these places that could pose a threat to us realistically, but I still get nervous swimming in places like this haha. The mountain lakes that are very clean and very clear water are ones that I don't mind swimming in, but those aren't too common. They are clean for sure, but they aren't as clear as I would like them to be so I just hang out in the shallows.

Next week I'm hoping to have some more recent photos for Monochrome Monday!