Day 8 - Water, water everywhere….
On such a glorious day as today I had to go to the coast as I love only 10 miles away from some of the most amazing coastline in the UK. The north east coast has sea stacks, little coves, caves, tiny harbours and wide open beaches perfect for surfing (when the north east swell accommodates!)
The link to the monthly theme is obvious - the seas and oceans are the largest bodies of water that we have across the world and a continuous source of amazing facts - such as more people have walked not he moon than been to the lowest point in the ocean. It has been technically harder to safely get people down there than to the moon!
I can understand the desire to just sit and look out upon the wide open sea. Our world essentially ends right there and all we have ahead is the inhospitable sea.
It brings to mind the well known lines from the RIme of the Ancient Mariner that I had to study at school by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”
I should mentions that this walk was done using a fixed 50mm prime lens only. I wanted to simplify things and this certainly did that.
It also really made me think of the broader picture because I simultaneously could not zoom in and capture the subject of the image in more detail (Like this boat to the right) OR get far enough away from the subject to get everything into the frame that I wanted.
In the former case Its not a problem; I really like the small boat in the swell off the shore. the rocks provide a sense of danger and the scale shows just how small we are in comparison to the sea
As a result a lot of the images today were taken with the aim of becoming either a 16:9 format or the even slimmer letter box format of 24:65.
I have also edited them with a lighter less contrasty feel, inspired a little by both James Popsys and Rick Bebbington (both great photographers and worth checking out if you have not heard of them)
The images are roughly combined into 3 galleries - the first is predominant landscapes - mostly with a small person dog to provide perspective (like the image above):
Then I have some of the main beach and promenade in south shields:
Then Finally a series taken low down as the waves were rushing in - I wanted to get the feel of the waves but on a letterbox format to really show the never-ending width of the sea!
