Tag: Motion

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All Done Here?

I’ve been returning to the same stretch of coastline for the best part of year now, while I continue to enjoy my early morning jaunts, one of my friends suggested that I’ve gotten stuck in a rut. I would argue against that, I am after all making photographs that I particularly enjoy and I don’t feel as though I’m repeating myself. Yet, the rocks are becoming awfully familiar.

So are we all done here? That was the question that was going through my the morning that I made the photo above. It was already much lighter than I like for my photographs but the line of the rock caught my eye and I stuck around to make a few frames.

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A Morning at Oak Bluffs

After spending time at Lucy Vincent Beach, other Martha’s Vineyard beaches pale by comparison. That’s not to say that there are interesting images to be had here. I decided to forgo the bandstand in Ocean Park and headed down to the beach. There were a couple of piles of rocks and old pilings at the waters edge that caught my attention. The image above was one of the more successful images.

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Lucy Vincent Beach

I’m on Martha’s Vineyard this week to attend Alison Shaw’s photography workshop. The weather has been good but we’ve lacked the spectacular sunrises and sunsets so far his week. One of the things that going out regardless of the weather is that it pushes you to go beyond the bounds of what you might think are conditions needed for great photographs. I’ve bumped up against this a couple of times already this year and again for our evening at Lucy Vincent beach. There was a decent amount of cloud cover and it got foggy as the evening wore on. The image below was my favorite from the ones that I’ve reviewed so far.

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I've Gotten Rusty

Normally the presence of water makes things rusty.  For me, quite the opposite is true.  It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get out with the camera in any serious way and I really felt it this last weekend.  I was surprised that it took me one session to get back into a rhythm.  I sometimes feel like this even when I have been shooting regularly – the first 15 – 20 minutes are essentially me stretching and warming-up so that I can work towards the image that I have in mind.  If anyone has good ideas for a series of ‘stretches’ to make that first few moments on location more productive I’d be happy to hear them.

Fortunately the weather held out while I was at the beach which meant that I was able to get a few sessions in and came away with at least one image I was happy with.

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Island Bound

I’m getting ready to head off for a long weekend at the beach again.  It feels like one last summer adventure before Autumn gets her grips into  us.  I’m hoping for clear skies so that I can work more on my project capturing still things such as rocks in moving water like the image above.  This image was taken at the beach earlier in the summer during a longer stay that I had.  I got up early many mornings, taking full advantage of the fact that since I was only moments away from the beach I could get precious extra minutes in bed.  I generally like to arrive well before sunrise and generally shoot until sunrise.  I like the amount and quality of the pre-dawn light which allows me to easily blur the water as I did here.  This morning I once again learned the lesson that you need to be very careful when shooting around water – a rogue wave soaked me to the skin, fortunately I got my camera safely out of the water, and though I was a little shaken up I continued on shooting to get the image above.

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Going for a Spin

I have had a lot of fun so far this year looking for ways that I can bring a sense of motion into my photographs.  To do that I have been experimenting with moving the camera.  One series of experiments involved panning with a slow shutter speed, both vertically and horizontally, a variety of different subjects.  Some of the results I quite liked and I will continue on with those ideas.  On the day I took the photograph above I was headed back to the car after a morning shoot.  Although I wasn’t ready to be done, the sun was too bright for the kind of photographs that I prefer.  As I walked back down the road I noticed a patch of rocks that had interesting colors.  The straight shots I made were okay, but wanting something different I tried both panning the camera and rotating the camera.  The result of rotating the camera is shown above.

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Trees in Motion

I have been playing with the interaction of still and moving, generally trying to combine the two into a single photograph.  When I saw these trees together on my way down to the beach recently I wondered whether I could build on my interest in motion to create an image that I was happy with.  I took a lot of frames but was happiest with the one above.  I may try more of these!