Tags
Black and White, Brine, East Coast, Florida, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Surf
Starlings probe
In vain
This place
Where the Sea is heard
Ravaging the Shore
Just a jaunt away
Ravaging the Shore
17 Saturday Nov 2012
Posted in Photography, Poetry, Sea
A Day in the Brine 
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and are in the midst of a great Thanksgiving weekend!
Thanks so much!! Hope you are as well, many jubilant cheers!!
Autumn Jade
Did you take the first picture??? It’s not like your usual pictures. Not that it’s not cool, mind you, but just different. My favorite one is the second one. Abstract! 🙂
Aye, it shore is (har haw) a photo of mine, and is an example of what I get when I have no idea what I’m doing (more than usual, rather har har), and cannot adjust aperture. It was the only one passable out of a series I took out in the water for the first time with a different camera, which was crammed into a case that was too small (I just could not wait, you see, haw haw). So, bobbing about out there, I discovered to my dismay due to the compact and taut situation, I was unable to adjust aperture, which, was a tragedy. Well, surfers zoomed by, and I had to snap them, despite my troubles, and then the bearded bloke of Irish descent chortled to me, “Don’t worry, I won’t run you over!” That was exceedingly polite. I gargled through the brine back at him that I would try and not flop in his way like a languid, slightly drowning, swim-by grannie, but I don’t think he caught my return of intense politeness. (I read a lot of polite-elephant as a very wee one.) Well, I fell out of the ocean and landed on shore after that. I hoped to escape and avoid admitting that I had trashed the shoot. (Best keep such things to one’s self, sometimes, I think. Don’t like to be all negative.) I thought I had gotten away as I rinsed the flippers at the shower when two wet-suit clad blokes chimed behind me. Oh dear…
“Hey, so you are a photographer huh?”
“Oh just dabble in it very slightly,” I mumbled.
“Do you have cards?” they asked.
Ding-fod thought they meant camera cards, “Oh yes, of course,” a moment, “Oh right, no, no cards!”
“A blog or something where you post them online?”
“Oh right, yes, yes, of course,” I stammered, then muddled through audible conveyance of blog address (forgetting I had a pen and paper in my bag and could have scribbled it off rather than go through all that repeating and mumbling mess that is my post-briny-bliss diction).
“The briny lass? Where are you from?”
“Ireland,” was my instant reply, “Er, I mean, am of Irish heritage.”
“Oh me too!”
Oh dear…that was grand and glorious news, but that now meant I had to absolutely post one of those terrible shots for the Irish gentleman of such politeness and bonhomie…
I then bid the blokes farewell and puttered away in prompt, opossum fashion, waddling quickly across the street and dissipating into the darkness beyond.
And so I fiddled and played and up it went. I still don’t know why I made the colouring like that, I was in some odd mood. Well, there you have it. One of the first photos I have ever taken with a different camera.
I’m much fonder of other surf shots I’ve gotten, and definitely love the abstract here much more than the former. I relate to the second one, I feel like I am very much like the sea-wrack there, yes, that is indeed, really, a self-portrait. And now my droning story has ceased.
Another great post. Just cut and paste!!! What a story. I would like to hear more about being able to be in the ocean and take pictures. Your perspective is certainly different. I think I might rather be in a small boat so I’m not all wet, or maybe you were. I can’t imagine holding my hands out of the water to snap a picture as a wave was crashing over me. I think I relate to abstract more, too. At least at times. Wonder why that is. I’d never thought about it before.
Me in a dingy in huge hurtling waves trying to snap photos?? I wonder what would happen in the next frame…;)
One time, I tried it. I made the mistake of taking along a fiend, I mean friend. She decided it would be hilarious to rock the boat like a seesaw, even after I’d mused that Man-of-War might be loitering about in the waters.
She guffawed and rocked and I went sailing. Promptly stung, I decided to swim to shore and ignore blubbering from a now very contrite sprite still in the boat.
She paddled after me, and when she saw my foot, that I was looking at curiously with a smile, she promptly began to sob and seemed to think I was going to expire right there.
“Naw, let’s go surfing up the beach, the purple-tentacles of Death won’t be that close to shore,” I said. And so we did.
Aye, aye, swimming out there with the camera is very fun, and a bit damp, and also a bit on the dangerous side when the surf is really high. I never invite a swim partner because of that fact. Sandy was the grandest surf I’d ever swum out in, and I had to go out far to really see those waves in their perfect majesty- most difficult part is coming back to shore. One must be very calm, patient, and well-timed, and not lose a flipper har har. Oh…if I’d had a camera (that was when I’d had my last public spill and was rendered camera-less), the photos…it was like Hawaii, beautiful sunshine, perfect giant waves, fantastic surfing, surfers dwarfed by the waves, rainbow cloud-breaks, it was glorious…
Yes, I do too with abstracts, aye arg intriguing to ponder.
Thank you for sliding by dear lassie, grand chum of mine, cheers!
Autty Jade
An amazing picture you paint here. I am such a sissie! I can’t help but think about being stung by a Man-of-War. I would have been the one dissolving in tears. I guess your lassie friend was doing the the tering up for you. The waves would have just washed yours away anyway. Ok brave one. I’m glad you made it!!!
I get too obsessed. One day the waves were perfect, and I HAD to go out in them, but there was no one out, and there were bodies on shore being rapidly devoured by crabbies, yes, jelly corpses. No sign of man-of-war bladders, though, just jellies I knew to sting, but not severely. Well…I saw one surfer try the waters. That surfer soon came back in again. A couple others were hanging on a little longer. It was a whole bloom of jellies swathing the shore for miles. Well…I was so obsessed with those perfect waves I decided to go in, as well. Instantly, I felt a stinging sensation all over. I made exotic-bird sounds and swam swiftly out. I kept thinking (yes I was thinking though it may not seem like it) perhaps I could get just beyond the bloom, where the waves were perfect, but as I got out there, and crests were crumbling over me, I could see pale-pink flaccid bodies through the glass face of the wave being hurled right at me. One decided to kiss my face. I lasted about twenty minutes and finally could endure it no more….but THOSE waves were so blasted beautiful, it was worth it. WOO and when I got out I beheld a giant ghost crab and we literally danced together. I had to watch my footing so as not to stumble over a stray corpse or two, though. That was phenomenal, I’d never waltzed with a crab before, and he was quite gorgeous! We danced perfectly in step. Beach-combers inquired as to what on earth I was doing. First stinging kisses with jellies, and then odd jigs on shore with some little thing…what is that a CRAB??! He was so beautiful. “Did you know there are jellyfish out there?” one man asked after noticing my sodden and dripping condition as he cautiously walked around me with wide eyes. “Oh yes aye, blast, and such excellent surf too!” and off I went.