Ocean palettes

Usually photographing the ocean is about the myriad colors - greens from jade to grass to coconut palm leaf; blues from sky to navy, blending with greens in turquoise and cyan, even browns and yellows.

But sometimes the palette is more limited. Near sunset on a cloudy day colors can be limited to a little washed-out blue, silvers, platinum gray, white. I love this time of day.

Today the sky and the ocean are just gray. No silver. No platinum. It's overcast and raining for the fourth - fifth? - afternoon in a row. There's thunder out over the ocean. Maybe I'll walk down and see if I can see the lightning.

Last year when we were visiting, before we bought Ola Lola's, we sat on the deck at Villa Tropical and watched two storm cells over the ocean. The lightning was like a call-and-response song. First there would be lightning in the near cell, then a few seconds later the cell farther out would answer with a flash of it's own. Then another in the near cell with a response farther out.

For now the lightning - and the rain - have moved out to sea. I can still see the occasional flash of lightning but it's so far away now I can't hear the thunder. I guess Amber can still hear it, though. He doesn't like thunderstorms and he's being pretty much a cling-on right now.