Project Images
Gallery Overview
Individual Images
Image 1
Kelp Cord on Driftwood
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5
Image 6
Image 7
Image 8
Image 9
Project Description
One day not too long ago my wife and I took our granddaughter and daughter in law to the Crescent City California Lighthouse. I have been hampered with a inch in diameter hole in the bottom of my foot and didn’t feel like walking on the rocks to cross over to the hill up to the lighthouse. So while they went to see the lighthouse, I took some pictures on the beach. I found some crabs, some snail shells, limpets, etc., and of course the lighthouse and sea rocks. I also found a few old dried up, curled up pieces of bullwhip kelp cord which were in the dry zone at the top of the beach near some huge driftwood logs. I got to looking at the textures and shapes of the kelp cord and the driftwood log and discovered a truly intriguing array of shapes and textures, and intricate designs. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did when I discovered them.
Self Critique
I really like the various shapes and textures and designs in the wood and the kelp. I had a lot of fun just putting the little cord of kelp up against the various drift logs in different directions and angles.
I tried these in both color and black & white renditions. I really like both schemes, but decided to showcase the colored frames with a few of the BW as possible alternatives in this project.
I think twelve images is probably too many for this project, and several of them are pretty similar, and therefore may be somewhat redundant. I didn’t have my tripod with me (cardinal sin I think), so some may be in better focus than others overall due to variable shooting angles. I entered one of these in the recent Weekly Challenge on Macro Textures and got a mixed review on which version is better, color or BW.
Creative Direction
I hope it is not too gimmicky to use the little curly dried kelp cord to tie all of these into a somewhat cohesive collection. I think my main focus was on the amazing textures, shapes, and designs in the very different pieces of driftwood that I found on the same beach. I find that the natural world has an infinite amount of incredible, beautiful, variation leading me to wonder how they arrived the way they were when I found them on the beach. That is the reason for my title, “Seawater and Salt Air” that I believe were major forces in shaping and preserving the characteristics of the driftwood. I know there had to be many other influencing factors like rolling down creeks in flood stage over rocks and other debris, or being buried in mud, or torn out of hillsides, or, being burned. I find this is much the way we as people are shaped not only from the environment we come from, the genetics involved in what we look like, but the rough and tumble world that gives us, no, makes us characters.
Specific Feedback
Aesthetic: Do you find the project interesting and varied enough to keep your interest?
Conceptual: Do the images lead you to consider how they came to be the way they are, and
Emotional: Maybe how we are shaped by the influences around us, and how that affects the way we see and do and look to the rest of the world?
Technical: Color or BW? Too many, too similar?
Intent of the project
Just for fun
Additional Details: It really started out as a fun thing to do while waiting for my family to come back to me on a beach. I’m not sure if, or what I might do with it beyond this project submittal.
Alternate Images
Please provide feedback on whether any of these images would fit more cohesively in the project.
Alternate Image 1
Alternate Image 2
Alternate Image 3
Alternate Image 4
