This exercise calls for you to take photos in a public space and how people use the space. I had a walk along a beach whilst on holiday and took the opportunity to take photos there. I 
wanted to show that a variety of activities took place on the beach. The beach at Rhosilli Bay is some 3 miles long; this meant that there were no real congregations of people as there was plenty of space for the people to disperse. Most of the activities were individual ones rather than groups.
I wanted to try and capture the feeling of space of the beach and how people were using it. I used my 24-105mm lens which meant I was able to get close enough to the people to take the photos without being too close. I felt this was important as obviously taking photos on a beach can be quite intrusive and I didn’t want to cause any problems or attract too much attention. I set the camera to aperture priority and an aperture of f8 to allow for sharp focus in the photos. If the exposure was too slow with this aperture, I increased it to f4.
As I wanted to show the beach as a wide open space, I needed to be on the beach at low tide. At high tide, the beach is only a few yards wide and disappears underwater in some areas. As I was staying in a camp site just behind the beach, knowing the tide times was not as important as it would have been had I been travelling to the area. The Gower Live website contains the tide time for the area. This showed that low tide would be mid to late afternoon each day.
With low water being so late in the day, meant that the sun would be over the sea and any photos taken towards the sea would be taken towards the sun. The Photographer’ Ephemeris shows the direction of he sun rise (yellow line) and set (red line) and the time of the sunset around 8:20. This means that when the low water is reached, the sun would shine towards the direction of light blue line. Of course, being in Wales, there was no guarantee that the sun would actually be out.
The photographs
I have included this photo to give a general impression of the beach. As can be seen, it is a long wide beach with very few people to be seen. I wanted to show this space in the photos that I took. The people are small compared to the space and this influenced the way that I took the photos. I wanted to emphasise the space and how big it was and that there were very few people on the beach. This meant that the few who were there seemed even smaller.
A small child is dwarfed by open beach and the promontory in the background.
2 surfers are almost lost in the waves. Obviously this was shot into the sun but I like the effect that this gives to the photo; surfers in silhouette, the water reflecting the light and looking metallic.
The 2 fishermen are small when compared to the Worm’s Head in the background. Again shot into the sun silhouetting the people and the Worm’s Head.
The lady in the foreground was collecting cuttlefish as she was walking. I liked the way that the lady is walking one way and the 2 figures in the background are walking the opposite way.
The dog walker is isolated on the empty beach.
The beach is popular with surfers and this one is just about to enter the water but looks like he is contemplating the surf before entering.
The beach is also popular with kite flyers. I the wind was strong and the kite was really moving through the sky. This is show by it being slightly blurred as the exposure was fast enough to freeze movement in the rest of the image.
All beaches are used by sun bathers but this lady is so wrapped up and covered that she is unlikely to get a tan.
The empty beach was used by a number of people cycling. I positioned the cyclist to the right hand side of the image to give her space to move into. Also this emphasised the emptiness of the beach.
The lady kept her head down either to save the hat from being blown off by the wind as she walked into it or because she was talking to the baby. Either way, she was totally entranced and did not take any notice of anything else going on around her.
Another activity which took place was kite karting. Although it was banned at the time to prevent accidents with other beach users, a number of karts were still running. The beach was large enough and with few people about, there was little danger of collisions.
As the sun went down, people would congregate on the beach to watch the sunset.
Looking through the photos, I am pleased with the ones that do have the people as small objects. These fit with my original idea of showing the beach as an open and empty space. The ones that don’t fit so well are the ones of the lady with the pram and the sunbather. These do not show the space as well as the other photos. However they do add to overall brief to show how the space is used. On reflection, it would have been better I had taken the photos with a wider angle perspective rather than zooming in to fill the frame. The lady with the pram was taken with a focal length of 105mm; the maximum zoom for my lens. The sunbather had a focal length of 80mm. So both photos could have been taken with a wider angle than I did.
If this was a submission for an assignment, I would delete those 2 photos from the set and submit the rest. However, as this is an exercise, I have left them in to show the learning point. I believe the strongest image from the set is the cyclist as this clearly shows an activity as well as the emptiness of the beach. I also like the sunset photo due to the colours in the sky. Your eye is drawn to the sun and then to the small gathering of people. There is a primeval feel to the photo and harks back to ancient times when people would gather to worship the setting sun.
Reference:
GowerLive. 2013. Swansea Tide Times. [online] Available at: http://www.gowerlive.co.uk/swansea-tide-times?field_tides_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Bdate%5D=2013-08-26 [Accessed: 19 Aug 2013].
John Belcher 