Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

Hi Folks:

At the end of the year the pull of the moon and the changing ocean currents combine to give us both winter storms and very high (and low) tides, known as King Tides. It’s a subject we’ve written about before, both in 2010 and in 2012. Every experience is different, and fortunately (unlike in 2010) I didn’t get swamped by a rogue wave this time.

The image below was made at Holland Point on December 12. The rocks that appear in the mid-frame are actually bedrock extrusions, and the one on the left stands about 12′ (~3.7m) above the surrounding seafloor. I went out at night on December 23 and not only could I walk out to this rock, I could almost walk around it. I’ve never seen the tide that low before.

Holland Point, King TidesOkay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!!

Hugs,
M&M

Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

Hi Folks:

Through the winter months we can get some very high tides (and consequently very low ones) known as ‘King Tides‘.  Winter here  also tends to involve a fair bit of rain and some really powerful winds.  The combined effect isn’t as strong here in Victoria as it is on the west coast of the island, but it can still be pretty amazing.  I went out a couple of years ago to try to photograph this remarkable occurrence and ended up with my camera (and me) getting swamped by a rogue wave!  Both of us survived the encounter, chronicled here: Photo of the Month – Winter Storm. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month

Hi Folks:  Well, if you promise not to mention that the ‘photo of the month’ post was due yesterday, I’ll pretend not to notice!

At a meeting of our local photography group recently, several people did presentations of images based on a specific theme.  Mine was on ‘faces’.  I should explain that I’m not a people photographer, and people appear in far less than 5% of my work.  I shot a wedding, once, and swore I would never do it again.  However, as a landscape photographer one thing I like to do is to look for ‘faces’ and things in other objects.  Sometimes they’re fairly obvious and sometimes they’re more elusive.  If you go through my Flickr photostream you’ll find a number of such images, but I chose one to highlight as April’s photo of the month.  It’s a piece of driftwood I found along the shore on Dallas Road – nearly an entire tree, in fact, and there are some good size rocks embedded into the roots.  However, looked at from the bottom of the tree the shape forms a fairly good representation of a human skull. Continue Reading →