Back in March I posted a photo journal depicting scenes of Gower smothered in snow. Beautiful, of course, but not exactly inviting.
Today, just a month later, I’m posting photos depicting a very different landscape, as spring simmers ever closer to summer.
It was yesterday. The sky was blue and open. A strong off-shore wind whipped white horses up and over the backs of waves that you could hear and feel breaking in the warm sand.
Surfers ditched their gloves and hoods for the first time of the year, finally free of the extra weight and paddling that little bit faster.
Filled with a sense of optimism and lightness, I considered ordering a new surfboard from my mates at JP Surfboards. A twin fish. Something fat and capable in more or less anything Llangennith waves can throw at me.
I want it in fiesta red – the colour of my favourite Fender Stratocaster – with fixed dark wood keel fins to match the rosewood fretboard.
And then I want to surf all summer, every day. And get back to the level I was at 15 years ago, before I moved to Barcelona and unofficially quit surfing. Before I got old and slow and heavy, fearful of big waves.
Camera Talk
For this kind of photography, which I approach as “street photography on the beach”, I use my Fujifilm XT4 with the Fujifilm 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8. It’s small and light but offers a 300mm equivalent focal length, which is long enough when you’re shooting purely handheld.
My goal is to tell little stories about the beach, the Gower. To show how people live here. They are not “photos of Llangennith”, rather “photos of life being lived in Llangennith”. Not photos of a place, but photos about a place.
Images are all more or less SOOC with a very subtle tweak on my iPhone 7. Simple stuff.
