Lymari at Burntcoat Head

When I first worked at Burntcoat Head with Miranda and Natasha, I was so stunned by the landscape, I knew it would be a space I would return to again and again. My second try at working there failed due to misreading the tide tables but, for this session with Lymari, I double-checked the tides and we arrived about an hour before low tide, insuring more then five hours of working time.

Digital original, 5 frame stitch

I would have loved to work with the 8x10 in the space but the session happened shortly after my move to New Brunswick, and I wouldn't have my new darkroom up and running for another month or more. Rather than making images I would have to wait weeks to see, I decided to work entirely with the digital camera; this way, Lymari and I could view the work immediately after the session was over. This worked well on several levels, as it permitted me to work in colour and, while I would have liked the higher resolution of the view camera, using the digital camera to create multi-image stitches helped overcome that shortfall.

Digital original, 10 frame stitch

The vast majority of the images we made were produced on the same island where I worked two months earlier. At high tide, the island is surrounded by water but, from mid tide onward, is accessible from the mainland and had the most beautiful water-carved caves and rocks on the outer side (which just happens to be the side away from where the public accesses the beach the island is located on.)

Digital original, 12 frame stitch

I find it quite interesting that after having such a strong reaction to the rich reds of the space, most of the images I ended up liking were in black and white. While digital photography permits you to work in both black and white and colour, I think my long experience of working with monochrome films has biased my judgment of what constitutes a successful image. I think with more time and consideration, I might end up with a more positive reaction to the colour images, but on the first run through of the images, in almost every case, it was the black and white images that really caught my eye.