Making Waves

Hi Folks:

We consider ourselves lucky to live about 300m from the ocean, and also that once a year we escape the city for Tofino on Vancouver Island’s wet coast. Both locations give us intimate contact with the ocean (sometimes more intimate than others 🌊). There are times when the ocean is very quiet, very smooth, and others where the ocean easily tosses about entire trees. We’ve learned to respect and enjoy both extremes.

Despite the title I haven’t made ocean waves but I have made many images of them. All of those used in this post have three things in common: the images are all of waves; they were all made last October; and they were all shot at 1/4000 second. Water is constantly moving, even when we can’t see it, and choice of shutter speed is something that responds to the situation at hand. Using a very slow shutter speed, say 1/4 or 1/8 second tends to add a smoothness, a silky texture to the movement of water. Going even slower can add a ghost-like, fog-like effect. That can work well for streams and even waterfalls, and when combined with a slow pan can create an interesting effect for waves.

For the most part, however, wave watching is an incredibly dynamic experience and when a wave meets the shore it happens very quickly. BOOM!! By shooting at a really high shutter speed we capture a very thin slice of that action in a way that the naked eye can’t quite visualize.

Most of the dozen images here are single frames; there are a few that are image stacks. These are sequences of photographs capturing the same scene, but with the photos superimposed over each other. Here we are privileged to see a period of time compressed into one moment. The stacks here are of 3-5 images; this too is scene dependent. Too many photographs used together blurs the impact. Finally, the last photo in the sequence is a triptych of three images – again showing a punctuation in time (less than two seconds) sequenced to bring you in and give you an opportunity to experience it for yourself. Continue Reading →

Panoramas: Making Waves

Hi Folks:

I’ve been making digital panoramas since I owned my first digital camera, and some time before that with prints (although we called them photomosaics back then). Just to be clear, there’s a difference (at least to me) between a panoramic image – one that’s been cropped to a wide-aspect format – and a digital panorama. A digital panorama is one where 2+ images of the same scene are combined in post-processing software to create one image that captures more of the scene than could be contained in a single frame. There are several advantages to creating panoramas; three of the most prominent are:

  • the aforementioned ability to capture more of a scene
  • the ability to use a longer focal length lens to avoid wide-angle lens distortions and vignetting
  • the ability to create higher resolution images than can be captured in a single image

We’re not going to get into the technical details of making panoramas in this post, but those who are interested are welcome to review our other posts on panoramas, here. This is an example of a digital panorama:

Tofino, BC – 60 images (click on any image to see it larger)

Continue Reading →

City of Angels

Hi Folks:

On most evenings, around sunset, you’ll see groups of people gathered along the Dallas Road walkway that runs along the south shore of Victoria. Every sunrise and every sunset is unique, but sometimes the Earth just outdoes herself. This was January 24, 2019, at Holland Point.

Marcia’s image first. This is a composite of 10 cell phone images, joined up with Autopano Pro and pushed around a bit in Lightroom.

City of Angels 1

Mike recently received a new Sony A7RIII camera and has been playing with it a bit. Three images here, at different focal lengths:

City of Angels 2

57mm

City of Angels 3

24mm

City of Angels 4

12mm

Obviously, the sky and the ocean deserve most of the credit here. Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,

M&M

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

The Earth is Singing

The other day I walked down to the ocean, stepped past the rocky shore and the water hid my sandals as the waves lapped playfully around me. I walked knee deep out to my island, where I’ve never been except at low tide, and had the ocean racing around and around the edges, flinging drops up playfully to tickle, to caress. I haven’t felt that alive in a long time.

And as I sat there, with all of the world behind me and only the ocean in view, she began to sing, just for me.

I realized that the old tales of Sirens being evil, luring men to their deaths on the rocks was wrong – that the sailors gave themselves to the water gladly, with full hearts, just to feel wrapped in that sound.

Hugs,
M&M

Holland Point Waves

Photo of the Month – Ocean Waves

Hi Folks:

I didn’t do a lot of photography this past month, but did escape down to the shore for a bit one afternoon. I love the endless patterns in the way the water meets the shore, and have photographed it with varying degrees of success. Today’s ‘photo of the month’ is one of these but processed a bit differently. Rather than trying to illustrate the water itself I played with the colours and contrast in Lightroom, adding a blue split tone value to the highlights to render an abstract image of swirls and shapes. Could be water… could be marble… could be…? I trust you’ll enjoy it.

Swirls

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 – October

Hi Folks:

End of the month again, and while Hallowe’en is tomorrow, I’m not going to post pictures of zombies, ghouls, ghosts or other Hallowe’en characters.  I thought I’d mention something else entirely: serendipity.  Roughly defined as a ‘happy accident’, serendipity from a photographer’s perspective often comes about from having a camera at just the right moment, to capture something you might otherwise have missed.  Most of my photography is landscape work, and while I do go out on photographic expeditions, I usually have a camera with me wherever I go – even if it’s just the camera in my cell phone. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

Hi Folks:

Today is the last day of December, and that means it’s time for the ‘Photo of the Month’ post. Being December 31, it’s also the last day of 2010. There’s an old story about spring coming in like a lamb or a lion, and if that also applies to winter, this one could be interesting!

I was walking back from the grocery store on December 20, and when I got to Dallas Road the wind was just howling and the waves were crashing into the beach. Despite this, the sun was still shining. I later discovered this is known as a ‘King Tide‘ event, a biannual event caused by the alignment of the sun and moon that creates extremely high tides. All I knew at the time was, “I’ve got to shoot this!” Continue Reading →