underwater swanage
Photographs shot with a small underwater digital camera in and around Swanage, swimming out to moored boats and shooting up from within a metre of the surface – capturing that sense of being just under the water. Colours are true, kept as they come off the camera, which limits shoots to the two or three days a year when light, visibility, tide – and temperature- come together.
The work deliberately embraces the accidental. I can anticipate roughly how each image will look, but light on rippling water changes faster than one can see, and every shot reveals patterns unseen at the moment of pressing the shutter. Sometimes striking, sometimes usable, many times not. Images that are too recognisable as ‘boat’ are usually rejected in favour of the colour field and abstract.
There is also a narrative to these images: certainly they are about colour and the delight of light, water and movement, but subjects are mainly working boats, with hulls that need constant repair and repainting, the patchwork colours marking a hidden cost for the few remaining boats fishing out of Swanage.
Swanage, 2005-2011