La Niña has meant that some of the late afternoons in December have been overcast and the light has been soft. This brings out the subtle colours in the rocks on the littoral zone east of the Kings Beach Rd lookout.
The colours disappear in the full afternoon sun with the blue skies and the rocks have a bland, bleached look and the stark contrast makes them look ugly. On those occasions we just walk across the rocks to Kings Beach Lookout and, even though I am carry a couple of cameras, I don’t bother to stop to make any photos. It becomes dog walking or walking for exercise.
What I find of photographic interest in the littoral zone is the subtlety in the details of the rocks.–their form and texture as well as their colour. This is easily overlooked –or rather not seen–when I am walking past them.
I have walked past this detail dozens of times and I only saw it that day because Maleko had found a golf ball buried under a nearby rock and he couldn’t dig it out. So I had to help him — he expected it of me. I was on my knees at the time and I saw this particular rock detail in front of me after I’d found the golf ball. On this occasion I was musing about rock abstractions and the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which is a way of accepting the transience, imperfections, and incompleteness of the world.
The art of walking is being lost, despite the few people that I see walking along the coastal Heritage Trail. The majority drove their cars to the Petrel Cove carpark and remain sitting in their cars. looking out to sea through the window screen of the car. Occasionally, a few fly their consumer-style drones from the carpark. Walking, it would seem, has been somewhat neglected and it is currently marginalized by the car.
Walking is slowness. It is the ‘just to walk’ bit ie., — to ramble or wander — that connects walking to photography. Geoff Nicholson in his The Lost Art of Walking interprets the ‘just to walk’ idea as walking mindfully, by which he means ” to actually be there and be in the moment and concentrate on what you are doing.” Walking in this sense is a catalyst for the photography and for thinking.