Thursday 9 October 2014

Making Waves



I drove to Brighton yesterday, to deliver and sort out a few things for my daughter, back studying at Sussex University, and decided to stay overnight in a convenient hotel, get up early and have a morning wandering around with a camera.  I chose well: a fierce wind was blowing straight in from the channel, and the waves were really piling onto the beach.  I have no idea why being next to the sea on a blowy, sunshine-and-showers type of day is so exhilarating, but it is.  It's like taking a short ride in a fast machine, but standing still.

Despite the Brighton Photo Biennial being on at the moment (what, another photo festival?), no-one else was working the seafront spectacle.  Too early in the morning, perhaps, or too conventional a subject for the more trend-conscious photographer?  Both, probably; their loss.


Unfortunately, camera lenses and salt water are not a good combination and, despite trying to stay downwind of the bigger splashes, a steady drift of seaspray* was filling the seafront air, and my lens got a good coating (as did my hair and beard).  So before heading back home after lunch I had to seek out a camera shop to get some lens cleaning fluid.  Luckily, Brighton still has at least one "proper" camera shop, in the form of Clock Tower Cameras, a genuine Aladdin's Cave of photographica.  I like to touch base in such places, have a chat with the knowledgeable staff, and spend enough money to feel I've helped to keep them in business.


* Is there anyone else in the entire world who remembers a children's TV programme from around 1960 which contained the phrase, "Seaspray?  Salty Cyril!" (I think Salty Cyril was a seafarer's ghost), the mere repetition of which would convulse me and my primary-school best friend John Boxley with hysterical laughter?  Odd, how these things stick in the memory.

4 comments:

John Krill said...

'The Ghost and Mrs Muir' ???

Mike C. said...

John Krill,

Thanks for the suggestion -- I don't think it would have been that, as it was a much more a low-rent British children's TV production than a full-on movie, but it may well have been riffing on something in the popular consciousness back then, and that may have been it (if you see what I mean).

Rather like Star Wars might figure, parodically, nowadays.

Thanks,

Mike

Martin said...

I can't be of any assistance re Salty Cyril, but I can say that these are very nice photographs, indeed. The first is five star.

Mike C. said...

Thanks, Martin. The sucking wave is so much more scary than the breaking wave...

Mike