silver sands at East Fork Lake

2009-01-03
silver sands at East Fork Lake


There's something about the look of film that can be hard to capture with digital. Well, every once in awhile I feel like it happens. This shot is another of the abstract closeups that I really like, shot at a favorite spot: East Fork Lake in Clermont County, Ohio.
When I was younger there was a show of black and white photography by Aaron Siskind at the Cincinnati Art Museum that made a huge impression on me. His chalky images were beautiful, like nothing I'd seen, abstract like the paintings of Franz Kline. Every once in awhile that influence taps on my shoulder and I shoot something like this.
To me this shot has the "silvery" look of film. It's dark brown sand that's been formed and shaped by winter water runoff flowing down the beach. I'll be posting more from this series later...right now I'm just enjoying jumping all around from subject to subject.
Camera: E-520 (OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.)
Focal Length: 28 mm
Exposure: 1/160 sec
Aperture: f 11
ISO: 100














  • Interesting image, quite beautiful and so full of texture. It was interesting to read your comment on the photo, as my very firt thought when I saw it was "ooh, Tri-X!" I'm feeling inspired, I think I'll grab the camera and head to the beach :-)
    Graham W @ 2009-01-03 05:43:23
  • Beautiful lines, textures and lights. I could see this as a meter big print on the wall.
    yz @ 2009-01-03 07:00:50
  • That's exactly what I thought, Graham! I still see the world as Tri-X, that was the film for me (Processed in ID-11 Plus).

    That has me thinking, yz. I'm going to start tagging some of these abstracts to try and put together a show. I've always printed small but you have me thinking in a very different direction.
    Jim T. @ 2009-01-03 09:35:47
  • beautiful! love the dark tones and how the viewer can feel the wet and muddy texture.
    StephCarson @ 2009-01-03 13:55:54
  • Very interesting photo. I like the texture and the tones.
    J.K @ 2009-01-03 14:39:16
  • I really like this one. The black and white treatment removes some of the reference and can fool the eye. It looks a lot like aerial photographs of river systems that I studied back in college. Many of those older aerials were made in black and white. I guess the photograph is kind of like fractal in that although it looks like a large river aerial photograph, it is really a small feature in a sandy beach by a lake ... does that make sense to anyone else?
    Craig Lee @ 2009-01-03 15:30:03
  • I really like this....It has a metalic look.
    Richard Heath @ 2009-01-04 13:48:46
  • You do seem to have reached a film quality in this shot. I'm not sure what it is about getting a good film like quality with digital. Seems like there is a very thin line of difference that just can't quite be pulled from a computer. I'm going to try for this myself.
    Chet Dailey @ 2009-01-08 14:31:02