Not the intended post

I had something else in mind to write this long, dark evening, but I braved the elements down at the beach this afternoon. It was blowing a gale, almost literally, with dry sand stinging the skin and in danger of sandblasting a lens. The sun was out, however, between the fleeting clouds. Also out were the kiteboarding maniacs. Mind you it was that windy a fair few of them packed up early, it was that wild.

It hadn't been my intention to photograph the loonies so hadn't taken a long lens. The longest I had with me was a mere 85mm. At the expense of two wet feet I managed a couple of frame filling action shots. The rest were perfectly adequate for web (or phone) browsing when cropped. Which brings home the message that for the majority of uses photographs are put to  these days pretty much any old camera that can frame the shot is good enough these days. Something I'll return to when the post I was going to write today eventually appears.

85mm with no cropping!

There was another photographer shooting the action, rattling off frames at a rate of knots on their plastic bag sheathed camera. Something  I soon got bored of when I gave it a whirl. I put my wide angle zoom to use making the sort of pictures I prefer making. Pictures of people doing things in an environmental context. I shied off from taking my trusty 28 out as I thought I might end up at the beach and I don't have a filter for the lens. A good move as I had to clean salt spray off the wide angle's filter a couple of times!

Back-lighting can give great effects, but when the sun is in the shot it makes exposure tricky. One reason I like photographing in winter is that the sun is low in the sky almost all day - when it does shine. On the beach this can make for shadows which become a part of the composition by filling the negative space of the sand.

The blank canvas of helps make people and things clearer than they would be in a more cluttered place. What I try to get are people doing unconnected things over the picture plane to give a flow or rhythm to the image, rather than creating a composition in a more usual way with blocks of colour. It makes me think of some of Joan Miro's paintings - which I never really got in the past.  Timing can be everything. Not just to get them in the right places, but in positions which mean something. The frame below is getting there.

Ever since I started photographing the kiteboarders I've been trying to make pictures from low down of people behind the kites lying on the sand. Some have worked okay. Today I got one that I like for its near-symmetrical simplicity, and muted overall colours. The flash of red and the gesture of outstretched arms spreading the kite's cords are what 'makes' the image work better than of my previous attempts. Which just goes to show that it pays to carry on repeating shots over time - even when you think you've already got 'the one'.

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