Foto Friday 08 – Eternal Tides

...and Spirits in the Sky

Eternal Tides, Sawarna, Indonesia, 2013

We arrived at Sawarna Beach around 4 a.m. after a hearty Nasi Goreng breakfast one hour prior. The last part of the journey was via Ojek, their tires almost flat on purpose because of the rocky ground. The young guys who drove us were a special sort of Evel Knievel, racing across the bumpy, winding path, invisible to mortal eyes.

Halfway there, we came to a gorge. Raging river below? Sharp rocks at the bottom? Check. The bridge was but a few planks of wood held together by a wee worn rope, and, yes, it was narrow, so narrow that the mopeds barely fit on it, and only one at a time could pass.

Let me rewind a bit. This was a Photo Safari trip I booked through a photographer friend of mine while vacationing in Indonesia. I went to this beautiful, remote beach with a small group, fully loaded with equipment, a 20kg backpack, tripod, etc., and all that on a tiny moped. The driver put the backpack in front of him, me, the tripod on the back, camera around the neck. Three of our illustrious group had already made it across the gorge. The fourth fell off the moped! Lucky her, she fell off the second they were on the other side.

I refrained from taking photos and held on to the driver for dear life. What excitement! Too much for some and, in hindsight, a little too risky perhaps, but that was then. I might have embellished the facts a bit for dramatic effect. We’re here now, and those three days at Sawarna Beach were amazing. The long exposure seascape you see above is one of my favourite shots from the trip, and if you take a closer look at the clouds, the reason for the post’s subtitle will become apparent. Stranger things appear on film at times…

I did a local exhibition “Eternal Tides,” with a select few BW fine prints, which you can check on my Flickr profile. Here’s a never-before-released behind-the-scenes shot. Sometimes, we’re getting too close to the subject. The photographer and camera were unharmed, albeit a bit wet.

Catching the Wave

What is your favourite type of photography? Landscape? Seascape? Street? Minimalism? Portrait? Something else? Do you have a favourite image you keep coming back to? Let me know in the comments below.

As for some fitting tune for that Black Tide, I can only offer Australian instrumental post-rock band Dirty Three and their album “Ocean Songs” (1998). Want to unwind? Relax? Take those 4 minutes and 33 seconds, enlarge the above image to fullscreen, and let yourself be transported. Or listen to the whole album. You might like it.

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