‘Matsukaze’ and ‘Shifting Sands’
Today is our last full day on Schiermonnikoog and we decided to walk through the pine tree forest to pole 5 on the Northern beach. Hélène, wanted to record some videos while playing her shakuhachi and I hoped to capture the fast moving sands over the beach. Below two photos while we are working on our goals.
While walking through the pine forests of the island, Hélène told me that for shakuhachi there is a piece called ‘Matsukaze’, which translates to ‘wind through pine tree’. As she told me more about the origin of this piece I got inspired to try my photographic version of it. Typically when I photograph trees with long exposures I develop them black-and-white, but now I also tried colour versions. I’ve not decided yet which version I like more, that will come with time. After photographing two compositions I decided to zoom in on one branch with pine needles, I really like how those worked out: you see the blurriness in the needles, but still can see they are clusters of needles,
After walking through the dunes for a while the beach and North Sea came in sight. The weather changed quite a lot today, we had hard wind, sun, rain and even a partial rainbow over pole 5 on the beach. With hard winds (5-8 Bft) I found what I hoped for: sands blown from the dunes moving at high speeds low over the beach: Shifting Sands. I’ve seen videos of this before and wanted to capture it in a photo. That actually turned out more difficult that I thought, the movement was so close to the surface that I couldn’t get separation between beach and shifting sands. Below are some of my trials that worked best, but it’s clear I need more practice to master these compositions.
Hélène had the good idea to capture a video, which I include below to give you an idea of the phenomenon.
Enjoy!
Wim