Back to the River

It is fair to say that I hate being stuck indoors.  This week we managed to get a brief rest bite from the winter weather.  Although cold it was sunny and we had some nice light.  So putting on my boots, winter jacket, thermals (of course, it is still February!) and picking up my camera and tripod bag it was time to head off back to the river.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been reading one of my favourite poets, Ted Hughes, The River and this was what sparked my current obsession of water.  Actually, that's not quite true.  I've always had an obsession with water for as long as I can remember.  However, that obsession rather involves boats with big sails and a lot of money!  That being said I do find water fascinating and I find photographing it just as fascinating.  Why?  If you own a DSLR go and stand at the side of a fast flowing river.  Put your camera in to manual mode.  Turn off autofocus.  Set your ISO as high as possible to get a reasonable image.  Open up your aperture and set your shutter speed to 1000th second.  The just fire off a few shots.  What you get is a pattern shot of water droplets and flow.  You can pretty much guarantee that no two shots will be alike.  Even if you take a shot of the same patch of water.  This is what I find fascinating.

So my little obsession with water has grown into a project.

For Remnants not only did I produce a book, I also produced a slide show and mini Audio Visual (AV) presentation (if you run through my past posts you might find it!) for the Marsden 100 I also made an AV production.  However, sometime last year Bob posted an AV that combined film making with traditional photography AV.  I can't for the life of me find the link but the film obviously left a lasting impression as this is what I want to create for The River.  There is still quite a bit of work and planning to do but so far in my folder there are 153 shots with 27 video files and I'm not done yet.  Editing will probably great reduce this but its nice to know that I am well on my way with the project.

And so, as the sun sets on The River for now I would like to leave you with this image.