As you may have surmised after my years of posting Ocean related media, that I do actually love the Ocean. I can sit for hours simply watching and photographing it, irrespective of the mood it may be in at any given time. Needless to say when it is agitated my emotions reflect the maelstrom. On edge, unknowing what happens next. Many is a time I will simply sit and watch, easily losing myself in its embrace. In a World gone crazy it is the one place that offers me respite from the cacophony of Bedlam emanating from every social pore. And over time I've honed my photography to reflect that raw power of the pounding seas. It is a fleeting moment in time. Just 1.6seconds, enough to showcase the turmoil of a moment.

Sitting atop the cliffs at Cape Zanpa here in Southern Okinawa, Japan the Ocean below me raged.  This region often bears the brunt of Summer Typhoons as they slam into Okinawa, the first landfall for many hundreds of miles, the storms have time a plenty to gather pace and power. Plateaus and Rocky outcrops define the topography at the base of these impressive cliffs. It is a stunning location, yet one that yields a deadly attraction. Numerous people, predominantly fishermen, are lost to this coastline on a yearly basis. Respect for the power of this area is paramount to self preservation.

On days of greater agitation I prefer to reverse engineer my photographic set up in order to arrive at a correctly exposed composition that requires a shutter speed of 1.6seconds. As you can see in the image above, it is enough to create the sense of motion not just with the water draining from the rocks but it also captures the violence of the Ocean waters as they flail against the rocky outcrops.

Using, as normal, KANI Optics filters for this particular shot I used a Soft Grad0.9 so as not to blow out the whiter clouds in the skies but to also get that longer exposure and details from the rocks at the base of the cliffs which were in some darkness due to the weather. I then used an ND64 in oder to hit a 1.6sec shutter speed. I was at ISO100 and f8 for the image. One more image to add to the collection. Raw and emotive it may be, but nothing compares to the emotions felt when sat in the company of the majesty that is our Oceans.

To see the wallpaper behind this post simply click on the small circular icon with the opposing arrows in the top right corner of this page when you scroll to the top. Click a second time to return to the standard page view.

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop".

Mother Teresa