"Behind the Lens" Part 57 Ocean Portraits

Published 12:22 on 12 Nov 2020

I have been posting daily now for 12 weeks and as the lockdown eases its time to change from daily to posting once or twice a week.It's been fun looking back through the hard drives and receiving feedback and stories from friends far and wide.This will be the last of the daily posts but I will keep it going.From Monday non essential shops are allowed to open and I will have access to my slide archive, so if there is anything you would like to see from "back in the day" let me know.

It's all about the people.One thing that has become apparent in this series is that there is more feedback about the people shots than the boats.A few years back I worked on a book in the "Face to Face" series by Huw Lewis-Jones. "Ocean Portraits" is an eclectic collection of pictures of people inspired by the sea, from historic shots to the modern era, alongside each is a short narrative about the subject and there is an in depth look at photography through the ages.

Cousteau, Moitessier, Blake, Peyron, Davies, Tabarly, Olsson, MacArthur, etc all together in one volume.Including my hero, Shackleton's photographer Frank Hurley. It was Hurley photographs of Endurance in the ice that inspired the night shots on Drum. In 1902 he was up the mast with a 10 x 8 glass plate camera (and a movie camera) and he processed his glass plates onboard.I am sometimes credited with being one of the first OBRs but Frank Hurley was 100 years ahead of me!

(Note not all the photographs in this post appear in the book.)