The severe storm that swept across South Australia in early May, produced lots of sea foam amongst the granite rocks along the coast. These wintery conditions, which started as I was returning on the ferry from my brief holiday at American River, forced me to postpone, and then cut short, my photo-camp at Lake Boga for the Mallee Routes project.
I had to wait for the severity of the storm to ease before we were able to walk amongst the coastal rocks. It was wet, the south westerly wind was gale like, and the waves were huge as they rolled into the shore.
I was able to spend a few days on our morning and afternoon poodlewalks with Kayla and Maleko photographing the ephemeral foam amongst the granite rocks. It seems to come with winter.
Even though I was very careful, I was still caught out a number of times from the waves as I was standing on the rocks photographing the foam. I often ended up with very wet shoes, socks and trousers.
The foam as a pictorial object would keep changing shape due to the wind and the waves as I stood on the rocks photographing it. This made the resolving the conflicting claims of surface texture, space, volume, and pattern in the picture tricky.
The subject matter is too ephemeral for large format photography in so far as I don’t know when the foam appears until I reach the coast, the conditions when the foam is present are rough, and the foam keeps moving during exposure.