With the weather improving markedly for the end of our holiday to Wales, it was a perfect excuse for a trip to the beach. And whilst, for many people, that might mean "sit on the beach and sunbathe", for us it meant underwater pictures, and combining a photography open call with, basically, an excuse to muck about with inflatables again.
The sea is gloriously shallow and clear on our usual beach, which makes it safer for using floats. That said, we always check the tides, we're swimmers, and we're damned careful; we know using floats and things is very much frowned upon these days (though the world and his dog had those inflatable paddle-boards this year, we counted 14 of them in the three hours we were on the sand).
Initially the idea was Amy did her underwater pics, whilst I (Ben) took some new shots in the series I did back in May, with the ball centrally in the composition over a landscape background. However, my two assistants (Middle Child and Younger Child) were less than enthused, naturally wanting to go play in the water instead, and with the tide so close and the beach busy, it was difficult to get far enough back for the shot I wanted. Middle-child accidentally bouncing the ball off one of those spiky bits at the front of the huts didn't help (the ball survived but we decided not to push our luck), so we decided to switch to underwater pics with the inflatables instead.
For all the clarity of the sea, there was a fair bit of seaweed floating about, which mucked-up some of the shots.
We mainly used the bag with the plastic lens aperture again for the pictures, holding the compact camera, as Amy had for the river shots on the Glaslyn
Taking shots out of the water gave it a weirdly hazy effect, which Younger Child reckons looks like a still from an Anime.
Compared to last time I tried this, the sun was nice and strong, allowing the light to shine through the transparent toys in just the way I was after.
After an hour or so of photography and play (OK, mainly play) the beach was getting busier, and it was getting harder to keep people out of shot. We knocked it on the head and went back to the sand.
Still, time for a couple of last shots, to bulk-out the similar angles I took earlier in the year.
Much as I enjoyed getting the pics, they weren't quite right for the Open Call I was going for, so I decided to head out again in the late-afternoon to get some more pics... of which more in another post, after we show some of Amy's underwater pics in the next one.
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