Balnarring Beach is only about 40 minutes from Melbourne, an easy drive that I have made more times than I can remember. Yet somehow, this ordinary stretch of coast became the setting for a rather long-running obsession.
For more than four years, I kept coming back to the same broken pylons and beams, trying to photograph the water in a particular way. I had seen the image in my head: the sea curling and stretching away from the timber, forming those creamy, almost string-like threads of water—soft enough to feel painterly, but still retaining the sense of movement.
It sounds slightly ridiculous when I put it that way. Four years of returning to a beach for a particular shutter speed.
But photography has always had these little obsessions for me.
The tide had to be right. The light had to be right. The waves had to arrive with just the right amount of energy. And then there was the shutter speed—too fast, and the water remained ordinary water; too slow, and the delicate strands dissolved into a featureless blur. I would come home with something close, sometimes very close, and think, perhaps next time.
And then I would come back again.
Looking back, I think that is what I remember most—not just the photograph, but all those earlier visits. The quiet drives down from Melbourne, the familiar coastline, the changing seasons, the times when everything looked promising and somehow refused to come together. Four years is a long time to chase a small idea.
Perhaps that is why finally getting the shot felt so satisfying.
For a few seconds, everything aligned—the tide, the light, the movement of the sea and that tiny decision about shutter speed. The broken old beams stayed exactly where they had always been, while the water finally did what I had been asking it to do for years.
There is something wonderfully nostalgic about that.
Places become part of our photographic memory. We return to them older, carrying different cameras, different ideas, different versions of ourselves. The beach hasn't really changed, but somehow we have.
And every now and then, after years of trying, the sea gives you the photograph you came back for.
Maybe that is the real obsession.
Not getting the picture.
Just having a reason to keep coming back.
Sony A7RV
FE 20-70mm f4 G
Linking Treasure Tuesday
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