Where The Wind Blows

Candid Fine Art Action Portrait Photography taken at the moment that a young girl playing on Borth Beach in Ceredigion , Mid Wales chose to finally look up from...
Read more

Candid Fine Art Action Portrait Photography taken at the moment that a young girl playing on Borth Beach in Ceredigion , Mid Wales chose to finally look up from her pursuit for the perfect rock and in the magnitude and magnificence of the wild and windy dance of the natural world and waves playing out in front of her. This candid portrait is all about storytelling. Its an image that is meant to evoke juxtaposing feelings about humanity , the natural world and our place and significance in it. By capturing the genuine reaction of a child from behind it allows the viewer to create the reaction to this stormy summer seascape from their own point of view and experiences. The emotive nature of the image is far more forceful because of the lack of staging , we are drawn far more into connecting with the child and experiencing what she is feeling because we can tell her reaction is one spilling over with genuine emotion. The perspective , taken from a high POV , looking down on the child and taken in shallow depth helps to enhance the juxtaposition between the magnitude of the coast and the smallness and fragility of the central subject , placed in the middle of the image , showing that this is a portrait not just a landscape allows the eye to be drawn into responding to her and her reaction to the world she finds herself in. The fact that she happened to be wearing a bright pink dress helped immeasurably to draw the eye to the child and set her apart from the neutral blue tines of the landscape as well as playing on the colour psycology of the colour pink and its traditional symbology as a sign of the child feminine. I was incredibly lucky to get the shot just as she had put her hand up to protect her face from the elements that hit her at the moment that she stood and looked out over the water because this gesture adds to the feeling of her smallness and need to protect herself from the outside world. Yet , this image is also meant to create a feeling of contrast. It is filled with possibilities . It is a symbol of the girls ultimate freedom , and in turn our own , her view of the future , her strength to face it( she is alone , but not lonely; cautious , but not scared) and all the outside world may throw at her and her final recognition of her connection with Nature , and the outside world as a whole. Its my favourite candid portrait so far , and I felt so fortunate that I was allowed the permission to keep what i had got chance to create . Especially as it is seldom that you get chance to have a combination of bright afternoon summer sunlight combined with gale force winds , I could hardly stay on my feet in the position that I was in and the amount of spray and sand in the air was something my lens probably would prefer to spend less time in too.
Read less