What do you think of this: Tel-Aviv beach trip

We were on vacation recently. It was more of a stay-cation – we are new to Israel so it was a perfect time for some local tourism. Instead of renting a car and heading to some holiday resort, we slept at home and took day trips. We spent the afternoon of our third day at a terrific beach in Tel-Aviv at the Tel-Aviv Port. It was my first time in the ocean here and I couldn’t believe how warm the water was. I’m not usually a beach person but I think that could change.

We left the beach shortly before it closed and moved up to the boardwalk where we had something to eat and took some photos. I like how some of these came out and I’d love to get some feedback if you have any.

I had my 18-55mm kit lens and my f1.8 50mm lens with me and I shot this with the kit lens. I’d like to buy a f1.8 35mm lens for the wider angle stuff but the kit lens works pretty well in good light. I like this shot mostly because of the way the beach line almost takes your eyes out to see. This next one does a better job of that and the curvature from the zoom adds something to the shot that I like:

This next one was an experiment with a slower shutter speed. I usually shoot in Aperture priority mode and switched to Shutter Speed priority. I like the effect on the waves but I think there is probably too much motion in the photo to save it. I don’t usually shoot much with a slower shutter speed but I get the feeling a shot needs more prominent, static reference points to prevent the motion from just looking like a blurred shot:

The sun was setting so I spent a bit of time taking photos of the sunset. I like the railing in this photo which I took with my iPhone 5 and debated whether to switch to my DSLR and my 50mm lens with its shallower depth of focus to highlight the railing. That said, this photo didn’t work out too badly:

It sometimes amazes me that my iPhone can take such great photos. I use the VSCOCam app which is a great photo capture and editing app. Here is another photo that I took with my iPhone which came out nicely:

When I looked at this next sunset shot to add to this post I thought it was from my DSLR but its actually another iPhone photo. This kind of quality is why camera quality will always guide my phone choices:

My full set is on Flickr if you’d like to see more. In the meantime, I’d appreciate feedback on the photos, technical or otherwise.