The beach is an awesome place to stimulate you creativity. Here I was playing near the surf during low tide (don’t be alarmed my wife was looking out for rouge waves and angry marine life) when I came across this tangles rope of kelp.
This is what I saw when I got down in the sand and looked up towards the beach. The marine layer was blowing in and covering the last of the blue sky. I did not have much time to play if I wanted to capture the contrast of the sky. I attached my Canon Speedlite 580EX flash (fitted with a bounce dome diffuser) to my camera with an OC-E3 off Camera Shoe Cord and held it up and to the right about arms length. I set the flash to -1 1/3 to bring back some detail in the kelp but not blow out the scene. This setting allowed the sky to maintain detail also.
It was a good day at the beach. Then again, any day I can get to the California coast is a good day. Please enjoy.

Camera specs: Canon 1-Ds Mark II with Canons EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM lens @ 16mm, 1/125sec at f/5.6, ISO 100, full manual.