November 2006

November 2006: Gray, wet and warm. No snow, no freezing cold, no sign of winter. No time for walking around and taking pictures. Gray sky, gray landscapes ( the leaves are long gone ), gray houses and gray faces. The perfect time to feel a little depressed.

Time for something completely different. I had the idea for this image long before but now it was the time to give it a try. When we travelled to Scotland in 2002 we also visited the Outer Hebrides ( Uist and Harris/Lewis ). These places are as remote as you can get in Europe and especially Harris is famous for it´s white beaches. The beaches there are white sand beaches and the only reason why they are ot overcrowed is the scotish weather. We were very impressed by the perfect white sands and took a little bit with us when we left Scotland. We placed the sand in a vase and also put in some seashells. But as it collectes dust we removed the vase and moved the sand in a large bottle. I don´t know where we put the seashells and so I had to use some super small seashells we bought somewhere in Italy. They were sold in a small boxes and look very nice the only problem is that they are so small that the very fine sand looks like peeple stone. Do give you an idea about their size: The seastar has the size of a thumbnail.

My first idea was to create an image that looked like it was taken on the beach on a bright and sunny day. A condition that obviously almost never happend in Scotland in real life and therefore has to be created in a studio. But I failed. Mainly because of two reasons.

1. The seashells were to small and make the sand look like pebble stone

2. For this effect I would have needed a kind of wide angle macro lens or at least a shorter Macro.

But I liked the images anyway because it is in a real constrast to the gray that surrounds us here in November. I will redo this image when I found the original seashells and when I got a shorter Macro lens. I used my YingYang Flashlights ( chinese flashlights that you can put in a lamp socket and only cost 29.-EURO/piece !!! ). They were wireless triggered by the built in flash on the D200. Even though the shutterspeed was short enough to avoid shake the camera was on a tripod because of the very limitted depth of field.

M-Mode: 1/200@f22, 100ASA, WB sunny, 2 YingYang Flashlights, camera on tripod