Last week I visited Caswell Bay for a few minutes. The weather wasn’t looking that great with low cloud and no sun, but after a while there were a few breaks in the cloud for the sun to shine through. This really lifted the scene and allowed me to make a few colour images when I had initially previsualised some black and white images.
I’m not a great fan of the current trend with long exposures of water, but do agree that it produces images with impact. The slow exposure technique has been around since the start of photography, mainly due to the early, low sensitivity films forcing long exposures. Recently though it has come back into fashion with Michael Kenna and Jonathan Critchley, amongst others, bringing it to the fore.
When I look at water I always see?the details of waves, ripples etc. and I like to try and retain some of this when making an image. The other reason that I don’t want totally detail free images that?I don’t want to do what everybody else is doing. It is harder, but making your own route is hopefully more satisfying and rewarding in the end. This is summed up in the Poem – The road not taken by Robert Frost
| Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | ???????? |
| ? | |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | ???????? |
| ? | |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | ???????? |
| ? | |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I? | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. | ???????? |
| ? |
