When the tide goes out

These are a few from a new set of prints I am working on of marks made by the action of the sea.

In painting terms – the ground is the sand, the pigment is coal dust and the brush is kelp while the medium is seawater. It’s a vision which often appears on the Northumberland coast where the coal seams are washed by the sea. These photos have been modified to give emphasis to those transitory shapes and marks.

They all start out as simple snapshots but each have been changed in Photoshop to amplify tone and colour to make the image independent of its original context.  In one the colour balance has been almost completely changed and the edges exaggerated using curve, levels and saturation controls to develop the raw images.

I have used Photoshop for years but rarely have the time to dig into its mysteries. I have a manual of 550 dense pages which is seriously over complicated for my simple brain, and feel that the endless possibilities of this powerful programme can detract too much from the original personal motivation to make images.

Mike Tilley