A mysterious woman is awash by the oncoming waves.
A few days earlier I was photographing the movement of water along the tidal line. The light was of the sky’s reflection at dusk and the combination of water and camera movement created surreal effects.
Later it occurred to me that it might be even more dramatic to add a woman to the scene. It was my expectation that this added element would create a point of focus and give the picture a vision from a dream.
The actual making of the photo was not easy. The water was cold and the thrashing of the waves was difficult on the model. I used a bit of hand held fill light while moving the camera with the other hand and shooting at a very slow shutter speed. I wanted to take as many shots as possible but the quickly fading light and the understandably uncomfortable model made for a quick shoot of no more than a dozen frames.
From those few frames two or three of them somewhat captured my expectations. What I did succeed at was pushing myself, and the model, to look for an image that rarely escapes the boundary of our dreams. From that perspective it was a successful night.
(NOTE: This and all Picture of the Week images are available for purchase. While the prints are not my fine art, hand made prints, they are inexpensive and more than good enough to start a collection. Please visit http://tiny.cc/PoW and order your favorites.)
Technical details:
- Nikon D3
- Nikkor 20-35mm f/2.8D shot at 20mm
- 1/2 @ f/9
- ISO 200
- Vivitar 283 Flash set manually at 1/32 power and fired with a Pocket Wizard
- White balanced set at 5260K
- File processed in Nikon Capture NX2