Perpetual Motion – The Changing Faces Of The Sea

By: Madeleine Lenagh

The sea has always played an important part in my life. And so, when I moved to a house very near to the beach three years ago, it wasn’t a surprise to find myself out there with my camera at all hours. 

I’m a firm believer in photography projects. By returning to the same place, to the same theme, again and again, I find that I see more, and that my photos gain depth. The Dutch seacoast, with its flat sandy beaches and moderate waves, may hold little interest to some landscape photographers accustomed to wilder shores. For me, they’re an endless source of fascination. The interplay between wind, tides, waves, sand, and sky creates an entire symphony of everchanging moods. I myself am a person of swiftly changing moods, and I recognized myself in this landscape.

A photography book tells a story through images. My book tells the story of the changing moods of the sea, that mirror my own inner landscape. This played a role in both the making of the photographs and the selection and sequencing of the images.

Sometimes my forays to the beach with my camera were planned (according to tide tables and weather forecasts), but more often spontaneous. I usually didn’t know what to expect, so I stayed open and receptive to the way the landscape resonated with my emotions, memories, and feelings. This is what determined when and how I pressed the shutter. And the deeper I connected to what I saw, the better I was able to express the feelings that it gave me.

At first, I focussed on the beaches closest to home. Later I started travelling up and down the coast, from the Waddenzee in the north to southwestern Zeeland. Occasionally I would stay in one location for several days (during springtide, for instance).

My most complex trip was a three-day voyage on a flat-bottomed sailing barge on the Waddenzee. The ship would go aground during low tide at night, and at dawn we could witness the water rising from the sand. A magical sight that I won’t easily forget.

Sometimes serendipity plays a role. I spent a few days in Zeeland, focusing on wooden pilings and sand patterns. One bright, sunny afternoon a gale-force wind struck up. The last thing I needed for the book was more pictures of waves! But the conditions were irresistible and led to one of my favourite images. I can still feel the adrenaline of that moment.

Unless I was going out for more than one day, I would take a single camera body (my Sony A7RIII), a single lens, and a small pouch of circular ND filters. My choice of lenses depended on how close I wanted to focus. I prefer using the 70-200 mm, but to focus on sand patterns I often used a 24-70 mm. And my 200-600 mm lens came in handy when I wanted to zoom deep into the waves. Sometimes I’d take a tripod with me, but not always. Some of my ICM images came about because I’d gone out before dawn and forgotten to bring my tripod along!

Creating expressive – even impressionistic – images seemed to be a perfect fit for the theme of the book. I didn’t confine my style to a single technique (ICM for example), but chose the technique to match what I was seeing and feeling in the moment.

The sea shows the rhythm of the moving tides and the ebb and flow of the waves. I wanted the book to express this rhythm in the narrative, so this was an important ingredient for the image selection and sequencing. The process evolved quite organically, and with the help of friend and landscape photographer Theo Bosboom, a loose structure emerged that is somewhat reminiscent of the structure of a symphony, with an introduction, a slow, calm movement, a crescendo, and a conclusion.

Following the musical rhythm of the sea and paying tribute to its resonance with my own inner landscape, I hope to offer the viewer an opportunity to explore and connect with an ever-changing world and its many faces. But the book also carries a message about the importance and joy of photographing close to home.

Photographing familiar scenes close to home enriches your art, encourages a mindful way of living, raises awareness of the need to preserve and protect these landscapes, and is better for the environment than traveling to one exotic destination after another.

And as an ambassador for Nature First, I’m very aware of how the crowds of photographers and tourists in general have ruined once beautiful and unspoiled landscapes. If we truly love nature and the landscape, we should do everything we can to not only keep our imprint on the landscape to a minimum, but also raise awareness in others to do the same.

Receiving two distinctions from the IPA International Photography Awards – Honourable Mention in the category Fine Art Books and Jury Top 5 selection – was a great honour and gave my self-confidence a real boost.

My book can be ordered through www.lenagh.nl/books and in bookstores in the Netherlands.

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