I have a CD kicking around here somewhere called ‘New Wave Hits of the ’80s,’ which is just one of many examples why you should never call anything, “new,” because shortly it won’t be. I mean, the art nouveau movement is well over a century old now; we’re due for an art nouveau nouveau movement. Anyway, these photos are ‘new’ in the sense that I haven’t featured them here yet, but not ‘new’ in the blog or internet sense, given that the oldest turns a month old tomorrow. And as you might have guessed, it’s another buffer. Plus I’m running behind on the ‘one post per day’ thing that I’m not even sure I’m pursuing right now.
But enough of that. Pictures!
Most of the reason I’m showing this tighter crop from the curlers/breakers are the water drops from the air being blown out of the collapsing tube; the splashy bit really comes a few milliseconds later as the water rolls over and meets the receding ‘old’ wave, but as the curlers converge together like this, a lot of air gets forced up. Cool, right?
Moving on.
The Girlfriend and I both liked this effect, capturing (by chance, mostly) this semi-curtain, semi-drooling maw appearance as the top came town, and again, you can see the wind effect to the left. None of these waves were big, by the way, only about a meter or so tall.
Can’t leave the birds alone. The brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) were fairly scarce when we were out there (‘there’ being North Topsail Beach, NC, but you should know that already, being a conscientious reader of this here bloggarino,) and I only caught a single one cruising the waves while I was beach-strolling one afternoon. Well, not quite true, because I saw a small flight of five as well, but only after they had passed my position and thus the greatest fartistic opportunities. Anyway, the raised wings here were the most dynamic, but the waves weren’t cooperating at that second, so I cropped for a wider shot and tweaked the color and contrast slightly. I’m okay with it, but I’m definitely after better.
Some more messing about.
This is the original, from one of the crappier days from this trip, without even any strong wave action. But as I was considering frames to use for monochrome conversion, I began playing with it, and produced an enhanced version.
Monochrome didn’t quite work (even though it’s almost monochrome by itself,) but this did – I think it needs the blue registers to carry the effect, just a little cold harshness to promote the mood better. The darkness that became much more evident along the edges is curious, though. Frequently, there’s corner darkness, the light falloff from the outer edges of spherical lenses just from the nature of bending light, but I’ve never noticed it coming in almost evenly from the sides like this. My best guess is that this is the nature of aspherical lenses, ground in a more advanced shape to lessen the ‘fisheye’ distortion that occurs with wide angle lenses. I might have to do some experiments. Or a simple web search; someone’s likely already illustrated it. But what’s the fun in that?
Still not done with the beach pics yet, but soon – we’re almost out of the woods. Well, I mean, entirely inappropriate metaphorically…