We took a trip to Cozumel last December to scuba dive, but unfortunately I caught a cold on the first day. Since diving and sinus infections don’t really mix, I grabbed my camera and looked around for some photography instead. Cozumel is a weird little island because all of the development is on the west side of the island, and all of the public beaches are on the east. What you won’t find are any public beaches on the west, making sunset photography from a quiet little beach practically impossible. So this photo represents the next best thing – a shot from the El Mirador beach on the southeast corner of the island looking back across the narrowest stretch of land possible.

My work travel sometimes take me to the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles, but in the past I had never brought along my camera. My previous trips were always in the winter (or whatever passes for winter in LA), which meant shorter days and less opportunity to get out and watch the sunset. But on my recent trip in late-April, I knew I would finally have a chance to see the beach on a wonderfully sunny late afternoon.

Last November we took a scuba diving trip to the Maldives. While we spent most of the trip on a liveaboard boat, we did spend a little bit of time visiting a couple of the Maldives’ wonderful islands. One of those islands was Dhangethi, which is a popular stopover for liveaboards carrying divers and other tourists. Unlike many islands in the Maldives, Dhangethi is not a resort but rather is a home for the locals, and while it still has the usual souvenir shops found anywhere tourists go, it also has little streets with real homes and real people.

I previously posted my photo of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel from my trip to Paris last May, and I loved the combination of the arc and the crazy sunset behind it. After an earlier rainstorm, the clearing clouds provided a gorgeous canvas for a sunset of bright colors. I had already taken several photos of the arc as a whole (my previous post), and I was looking for another photo that made good use of the light and color in the sky.

I have so many fond memories of watching sunsets on the west coast, and I always try to catch them whenever I can. There’s something magical about seeing the sun drop down and then disappear below a wall of waves – giving a final valedictory glow to the continent before darkness. When I visited Carmel-by-the-Sea last month, I knew I wanted to catch that same experience with a photo from the beach.