Has a photograph ever made you feel?

The Story

Has a photograph ever made you feel? I am talking about looking at a photograph and feeling something special, perhaps a connection to a childhood memory. Maybe a smile comes to your face as you recall a time spent at a spot similar to the one that you see.

Very often when I look at a photograph, I am not just seeing the image before me, but rather feeling the experience, reliving the moment  that I created it. I think that is one of the things that I enjoy most about photography!

Conimicut Point Sunrise

Close your eyes and let the photograph that you see come to life in your imagination. Take a deep breath and feel the cold, raw winter air fill your lungs. Can you smell the salty air? Imagine the soft breeze dancing across your skin. Let your ears tune in to the sounds of the ocean gently hitting the shore.

The Photograph

Conimicut Point in Warwick is a small park right on Narragansett Bay, only a few short miles from my home. While well into March already, the weather was still very cold and I was surprised by the amount of ice along the beach. I often try to find a strong compositional element for the foreground and decided that perhaps a piece of ice would work nicely. After a few minutes of walking the beach, I settled on this location, and with a wide angle lens I liked the way the curve of the beach seemed to stretch on forever before ultimately reaching out to the lighthouse on the horizon.

As I looked at the images I was creating on the LCD on the back of the camera I was not happy with the water. It was a very quiet and peaceful morning, yet the photographs that I was creating had far too much movement  for the feeling I was trying to create. I added a 10 stop Neutral Density Filter to the lens, bringing my exposure time to 4 minutes. The increased shutter time eliminated all the movement in the water, and to me gives the image a much softer and more peaceful feel to it!

My favorite thing about photography is when I can walk back to the car content, happy that I have been able to create a photograph that expresses how I feel. It doesn’t always work out that way, but when it does, that feeling is fantastic!

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