Men of the sea

During a browse round the Magnum website blog, I came across some great work by Magnum photographer Jean Gaumy who photographed four long fishing trips to record the day to day struggles of working fisherman. He published the images in 2001 for a book called 'Pleine mer' which has been published as an english version called "Men at sea.

Gritty and powerful, Jean's remarkable work certainly captures the raw power of the ocean, his love of the sea and the hard toil of the commercial fishermen who work the sea.

This second link goes to a bigger gallery of Jean's work and includes his Pleine mer work, photography from Iran plus some fascinating work from inside a French prison.

See gulls

Black headed seagulls in flight after being fed - Salthouse, Norfolk

No i didn't feed them but the car in front of me did, with the result that the birds swooped in for more in a rather intense flying display. I just hate people who feed seagulls.....

Feeding these birds can make them VERY aggressive and they can be very confident birds, able to snatch items of food straight out of your hands. The seagulls aren't at fault - the people are! Just try eating fish and chips in Conwy harbour, North Wales and fight off the delinquent gulls trying to get your chips!

The bank in the distance is the barrier between the sea and the land and in the early 1950's the sea broke through and flooded Salthouse.

Rainy daze

Rain soaked sign at Sandringham, Norfolk

The weather has always been a popular conversation topic for the British and as you may have seen from the news, it has delivered a great deal to talk about with the flooding of areas of Oxford, Gloucestershire and the north of England over the past couple of months. Some 350,000 people are currently without tap water and vast swathes of land are underwater making it the worst flooding in sixty years. The summer so far has been a complete washout!

The poor summer weather certainly had an affect on this Norfolk photo project. One of the more noticeable things on my trip to Norfolk was how quiet many tourist areas were. Most of the top resorts were certainly not as busy as they should be; more than likely due to the heavy rain that was frequently falling during my stay. The weather was changeable... to put it mildly!

A respite in the weather for the next few weeks is looking unlikely according to the Met office, so its more and more likely that this year will be a poor year for UK tourism.

Broadly speaking

Boat makes its way into Rockland Broad, Norfolk

The Norfolk broads is one of the unique features of the county and were created by the extensive excavation of peat during the roman and medieval periods. Originally it was thought that the broads were a natural feature but in the 1960's, it was discovered that the broads were a result of the flooding of peat excavations and were indeed man made.

The broads are extensive and cover over 300km of water but only 200km is navigable by boat. The broads are made up of seven rivers and around fifty broads although only sixteen are open to navigation. The water is rarely any deeper than twelve feet throughout the whole network of broads.

This was a tricky exposure that i had to do using manual setting on the camera. Fortunately the boat was not moving fast ( barely 3mph) so i was able to do some test shots before they arrived on the scene. Exposure was 1/500th at F11 which captured the contrast of light and dark perfectly.

Home away from home

Beach huts along the sea front at Sheringham, Norfolk

The seaside holiday in Britain was an invention of the Victorians and the development of many resorts around the UK are a reflection of that era. Hotels, Piers, sea front shelters and beach huts are all due to the Victorian holiday of going to the seaside, to walk and take in the air.

In many respects, these seaside resorts haven't altered very much with many families returning year after year to the same resort because of what's on offer; a simple, reliable holiday. This is when a beach hut can become a valuable asset; a home away from home down at the beach. It's not uncommon for a well placed beach hut to be sold for around £25,000 and there's often fierce competition to buy when a beach hut is put up for sale.

Originally the Victorians saw them as just places to change for a swim but these days they are often used as small chalets down by the sea front where you can make a cup of tea, read a book, have a sleep or just watch the world go by.

Sea defences II

Sea defences - Sheringham, Norfolk

Here's a second shot of the sea defence wall taken from the opposite end but this time taken with a Nikon D2H.

For the technically curious, all of the digital images are shot as RAW files on a Nikon D2H and saved onto Sandisk Extreme III/ IV CF cards. The RAW files are put through Capture One and outputted as JPEG files.

Sea defences

Sea defence wall at Sheringham, Norfolk

We like to think of the coastline as a permanently fixed boundary between the land and the sea but it is, of course, constantly moving due to the effects of the wind, waves and tides.

This wall is part of the sea defence for the Norfolk seaside resort of Sheringham but it wouldn't look too out of place in Normandy as part of Rommel's atlantic wall; designed to stop the allied invasion of France during World War Two.

The wall stretches right along the sea front of the town with a few concrete ramps included for fisherman to access to sea with their boats. Although the wall has a very important role in protecting the town from the ravages of the sea, its not exactly nice to look at with the concrete walls creating a very unnatural fortified feel to the pebble beach.

The coast around Sheringham and all along the Norfolk coast is in a constant battle with the elements and in some places, the sea is winning the battle.

Photoshop of horrors

There are times when Photoshop is just stuck into overdrive and the resulting image bares no comparison to the one taken by the photographer. Just look at this image of U.S country singer Faith Hill.

You could laugh at the 'enhancing' but people generally believe what they see! No wonder we end up having a generation of young people with low self esteem and eating disorders.

Rather strangely, the media seem to alternate between this 'pure beauty' and the ' what a mess' type celebrity reporting. its put them up on a pedestal and then KNOCK em off.....