Jan 28, 2015

Picture a Week (PAW): Week1: Moonlit whelk watch

Expecting a great sunset after a busy day, I headed towards Port Elizabeth's King's Beach hoping to capture the firmament. The clouds turned a little yellow, then faded to grey as the haze swallowed up light. I was disappointed but waited to see if something would come of the full moon. It was a busy beach scene which I captured with a few tripod mounted long exposures. But I kept being drawn to a woman, on her own, constantly combing a small area of the beach. I wanted to imbibe a sense of her solo activity so it was just a matter of timing to isolate her. A large ship in the far distance seemed interesting but in the end proved a distraction to the mystery of what the woman was doing. When she left I wandered over to her scene and could see nothing unusual. I guessed she must have been collecting whelks (Bullionidae) and tossing them into the ocean (where they belong?). I'm glad she went to the effort because otherwise she wouldn't have captured my attention and I wouldn't have captured this moonlit assisted shot.

WEEK 1: A woman gathers welks (Bullionidae) under a full moon. Kings Beach, Port Elizabeth.
Canon EOS 7D, Tamron 70-200mm @ 70mm. ISO 800, f2.8, 1/90th. 


New for the blog: 2015 - Picture a Week (PAW)

Since 2010 I have been sure to be photographing at least every week. Sometimes this is easy, it happens as a matter of course. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the photographic work that I do is just that - "photographic work that I do". I love photography, but I don't love all photography. A lot of my pictures a week (PAWs) emerge out of what I do for fun. Often, but not always, they emerge out of places where I have no clients to please, no deadlines to meet and no pressure to perform. It is important that I find these spaces and places for without them I run the risk of becoming an unenthusiastic, uninspired and uninspiring photographer. The possibility of this abhors me. So I make sure that I am shooting what I want at least every week and posting a picture. They are all on my website, but this year I've decided to add them to my blog too. Now in its sixth year, it has become a kind of visual diary for me. Like most photographers I remember the times, I remember the mood, I remember the circumstances and I remember my intentions. I hope you remember to come back and have a look at the progress.