Confluence

Photo by EJ Camp, photographer, artist, composer of all things visual.

A few years back, the glaciers did their magic by carving out Long Island Sound and depositing big chunks of rock along our (Long Island's) north shore.  We have cliffs and, of course, hills that make them and down on the beach, long worn down boulders with smooth sides and jagged tops in keeping with the wind and the waves that do their work on them.

Long Island Sound was a bit stormy the last days, what with a northwest wind that blows the length of it.  It made for some good waves and spray.  For those with patience, it was a composition waiting to happen; just the right late afternoon sun, the right sky with layers of color, paths of sunlight and shadow, and of course, a combination of perfect waves and whitewater illuminated just so.

Waves have a lot of terminology, and pictures like EJ's compel the soul to find out about things like that. (you can here if you have a mind to) What you can't find out by reading is what mind's eye do you have to possess to anticipate the picture above.  How can you know in advance what things will look like?  Is it all so predictable to a chosen few?

A century and some years back Claude Debussy, the French composer, wrote an orchestral piece on the sea.  One of the movements was the "dialogue of the wind and the waves".   He spent a lot of time on the Atlantic coast of France with the big breakers that mound up from a long trek across the ocean and noted what some sailors have observed from time to time; that when the whitewater hits the air, specially in wind, the water and the air almost become one.  They talk to each other.

Seems the sea talks to some photographers as well.  Most of us just don't hear the exquisite dialogue.