Revisiting the western dunes and beach
When I last visited the Western dunes and beach i had a nice snow blizzard, so I decided to revisit this area without such blizzard. I even had a weak wintery sun to accompany my trip. With different weather circumstances I found different compositions that could be roughly categorised into skies, beach patterns and dune grasses.
The skies were beautifully dramatic with that wintery sun. I decided to go only wide angle, 16 mm on my Fujufilm X-T4, i.e. 24 mm full frame. Here are some of my shots.
You could argue that the last composition belongs in the category beach patterns 😉. When on the beach it was close to high tide. The beach close to the dunes doesn’t get fully flooded through, only under extreme conditions. So I spent some time searching for patterns in the sand. This is something I’ve never done before so in the beginning I wasn’t sure what to look for. When I look at the work of other photographers I anlways think that I wouldn’t recognise these compositions. But I needn’t have feared, compositions came quite easy. I could have spent longer on the beach, but the cold wind drove me back into the dunes. Nonetheless, here are the compositions I’m most proud of:
In the end I spent most time in the dunes between the dune grasses. It was here where I was most protected from the wind. One of the goals when I set out on this photography retreat was to practice my composition skills with these grasses using long shutter speeds to soften their tufts. It was more difficult than I initially thought as they overlap so easily, creating a mushy photo. But, with some perseverance, I managed to find some interesting compositions. And with the coming and going of sunshine their colours changed too, an added bonus.
All in all I had a great day, being outside for about four hours, walking a distance of close to nine kilometres. Luckily my leg kept fine, giving me no problems during the walking and many crouching and standing still positions during photography. Each day has given me different surprises and today was no different. As much as I liked photographing the island while snowing or in a blizzard, it was a nice change to have dry skies with just the cold wind.
If you like the pattern images, hang on to my next post where I’ll show more beach patterns and describe a short walk to the northern dunes and beach in wintery snowing conditions with a very cold eastern wind.
Enjoy!
Wim