"I Dreamed a World" in long exposure
This is the first photograph I took using a Big Stopper, being that an ND filter capable of reducing the entrance of light by 10 stops. Photographs with minutes of long exposure create that illusion that water becomes a mirror, mist or fog. Is that perception of reallity that can produce a common seascape into a magicall and dreamy scenario.
As any electonic device, the camera generates heat and the sensor warms up during long exposures. This produces noise and its something you normally want to avoid in your photographs (this is a very personal decision since some photographers like noisy images). Due to this unwanted noise, I use a Noise Reduction system that the camera has. This Noise Reduction setting takes as long as the exposure itself, so if you are shooting a 30 minute long photograph, its actually going to take 1 hour to complete both, the exposure and the process of reducing the noise.
For this photographs I always carry with my remote control in order to open and close the shutter without touching the camera. If the camera is touched, a vibration will be generated, enought to make the image blur. Also, something you want to avoid since this will be translated into low definition and unsharpened photographs.
After the shutter is opened, I know I will have a lot of time before I close it again. Here is the time to meditate, to make the seascape mine and remember my thoughts every time I see my photograph again. This is only possible when you are not trying to stop people to cross in front of the camera. For this photograph I only had to stop one person that was walking by the beach. She kindly passed me by behind my camera.
This is the result, followed by the text that explains a little bit what happened in my mind while meditating. Please enjoy!
The feeling of being an individual isolated to the rest is just an illusion. We cannot say what human being is without an explanation of the environment. We are one with the other in a way that what happens inside, happens as well on the outside. I Dreamed a World, an utopia, where the skies are seen as a window to the universe, the land prowls as a single organism that serves as a whole and time does not pass with an urge for tomorrow. A world where the ocean is molten with no textures, impossible to separate from itself and from the land that surrounds. This world represents a hundred and thirty three seconds in an instant of fleeting attention. This world, the world I dreamed, shows the visible cosmos, makes you feel the peace within and imagine.
