These images were shot with the inspiration and intention to capture moments of silence. The photographs were shot at Big Bury, a beach that I often escape to surf and find peace. In Erling Kagge’s book “ Silence in the age of noise” he says “There are so many noises that we barely hear them all. Here it was different. Nature spoke to me in the guise of silence. The quieter I became, the more I heard.”
This passage stayed with me when I went out to capture my images. I was looking at the small details on the beach, the more you look, focus and ignore distractions, the more you see. I could have been the only person on the beach once I had focused on the silence around me, it was a peaceful process taking these images.
To make these images I used a series of ND filters so that I could get a long exposure of the water. Most of my exposures were 30 seconds long as I stood on the edges of the waves coming in and out. I thought that by slowing down the exposure the camera is capturing a still moment that cannot be seen through the human eye. This creates an unseen silence that is always there with the motion of the waves coming in and out, yet will never be seen in the same way that the camera is able to capture it in.
After I shot these images, the creation was then done in Photoshop. You can see in the Raw images that the camera did not capture much of the colours or details. I had to adjust the exposure, hue/saturation, contrast and curves to bring out the details in the images. I wanted the blues to look as natural as possible so spent quite a long time colour correcting the images, I still feel like I could have got some of the images to more natural tones.
At this point in my project, I am still experimenting with how I am capturing the metaphors od silence and escapism. I think that when I sit down and write my proposal over the next week I will be able to straighten out and clear my line of thought going forward. I think that these images “look nice” however I do not feel like they give the viewer many indications of the meaning behind the images. Perhaps once I have shot more images they would next to them, but at the moments I do not feel like there is much depth in the philosophy of the photographs. Going forward into the next shoot I am going to open up to a larger view of the images and shoot bigger landscapes, possibly with some self-portraits to make it aware to the viewer that they are connecting with a personal line of thought of mine.