Ocean Village (Yachts and Masts)

The early winter sun breaking through cloud over Southampton's Ocean Village, earlier, shot with my 20mm wide lens, on the full-frame D700. This is the hot property, posh marina, formed by the yuppie generation back in the 80's and where many round-the-world conquests start from and end at. I'm indelibly drawn to the place and go back every now and then.

For poor me, it's another world entirely and like many, am drawn to the sheer spectacle of millions of pounds of floating craft that are forever seemingly moored, a bit like those classic car collectors, who dare not drive their beauties. Like lots of Brits, too, it's the draw of the water and romance of the open sea without having to actually go too near it that is so enticing!

They also make for great photographs and whilst my short train trip got me there before the shops opened and my minimalist quest was to snap people Cartier-Bresson style, after my Blip for 20.11.

Ocean Village was not on my radar but the gritty wideangles of my fixed 20mm f1.8 Sigma and details taken with the medium telephoto Nikkor 135mm f2 (I did say minimalist, as in the days of the old fashioned photojournalist - I also took my even older 35mm f1,4, which I hardly used), I found myself veering toward it, mainly for a public convenience and a coffee. So, after the 3 or so miles walk there, via much less scenic surroundings I found it under re-construction and I thought it was actually closed for the season, not the apartments of course, but the bars and shops.

All this while it was cloudy but one still takes snaps, as it is, as one reminds oneself that it's different to how it was last time, which was only about 3 months ago. Yes, I'm a regular and it's usually a deeply polarised and saturated postcard image that I get. So, with my back to the big drills, boring machines and big noise, I've gone for the undeniably classic view, against the light. I had to open up the dark foreground by lassoing it off from the sky and using the highlights slider (that's the simple explanation) and I then darkened the sky separately, but not by much at all. The sun this bright will always burn out, you can't do anything with it and attempting to often looks false and rather ugly.

I could have put up a sunshine shot later, but they weren't ever going to be deeply saturated blue, the sun too low and watery and weak for that. I could have put up one of many from the walk on the way and since, but felt that whilst I may lose a couple of stars by not putting up something clever, or witty or making a statement, people like looking at pleasant pictures of pleasant things - and so I wanted to reward you lovely lot after some more experimental images from me recently. I like it - a lot, I keep putting it up full-screen and it'll be a screensaver for a bit.