Once every year, in the fall vacation, it has been a tradition in my family to drive up north, to Hirtshals, for a week of nothing but relaxation, walking along the beaches and playing board games. This is something I have done for as long as I can remember (I’m 19 at this point and my parents have done this for at least 20+ years).
Last year was also the first year that I got to play around with film photography. But… film being film, the roll turned out to be nothing (that’s how it goes I guess). But I thought it would be a fun thing to do some more again this year, since I lost the ones from the year prier. My Canon TX was my main camera the whole vacation, but I shot some normal photos now and then.
One of my last evenings I decided to go down to downtown Hirtshals and take a stroll around the harbor around sunset. The weather was pure gold. The clouds came out and had their play and the sun was golden as ever. To me this is some of the best golden hour weather you can get. I played around with some ‘flat photos’ inspired by the way Dino Kuznik does his stuff (go check him out, his work is so unique!) – and what about some panoramas? I tried doing a photo merge thing (where you take a lot of different photos and combine them afterwards), and it was totally different from what I usually do. I quickly found out its important to make sure you have all the photos you need (I missed one photo and now I can either make a long but low panorama or a shorter but a bit taller one) – the result was awesome nonetheless (photos are down below!)
At the same time, I walked the harbor quay, I found the ocean to be quite still. It was windy, but the waves didn’t come crashing in as they usually do. So, I thought I would try some long exposure photos of the waves, to get some my dynamics and motion into the photos.
The long exposures of the water were more difficult than I initially thought they would be. Getting the composition right was pretty easy but timing the right length of exposure to the right wave was the hard part(!) – everything takes its time and this definitely did as well (but it was fun and interesting, so isn’t that enough?)
Shortly after the sun went down, I walked back to the car and drove back to the house we were staying in. The vacation went fast by, but it was great. The Northern Sea has a special place in my heart and I can’t get out there enough. As I’m writing this, the days are getting shorter and shorter and I’m planning my first ‘real’ photo-project, which as you may can guess will have something to do with the West Coast. Anyway, this was great – take care and I’ll talk to you soon!
