Breathing sand and sunshine

Why is it that, with battery fully charged and visual senses hyped to the point of true creativity, that the weather conditions produce high winds and a sandstorm?

I am very much a ‘fine weather’ photographer and I am not prepared to put myself out very much to gain a shot; the possibility of sand grains inside the lens of a new camera sounds like altogether a bad idea. Far better to mess around with the images that I already have on the kiddie version of Microsoft Photo Premium that came with the laptop!

I was hoping to go down to the edge of the sea and attempt to get some soft focus pictures of the waves as I think that I have worked out how to adjust the aperture and film speed manually. Unfortunately I think that there are ‘failsafe’ procedures built into the camera so that even when you have branched out on your own and started dictating your version of the correct exposure the brain inside the camera takes a paternal interest in what you are doing and tweaks your own attempts at unaided efforts! I completed a series of test photos of running water from the tap, but I'm not sure what I have proved by my end resuts! Apart, that is, from a series of pictures of a running tap.

I braved the beach in spite of the howling winds. Setting up my sun bed (a triumph of hope over observation) with hands occupied in wrestling with a lively towel, a particularly vicious gust of wind took off my glasses and whisked them away.

For most people this would be irritating; for me it was a disaster. My glasses are rimless with the arms a mere suggestion in the thinnest of titanium wisps. In other words almost invisible and light as a feather. Let us now remember why I was wearing the glasses in the first place: to remedy my myopia. So, almost invisible and light as a feather off they go in the wind into a sand fuelled gale into the out of focus world that exists a few feet from my unassisted eyes. Oh, and I think I failed to mention that the glasses were the most expensive pair I have ever owned.

Throwing the bloody towel to the ground a first peer discovered nothing of ophthalmic interest lying in the immediate vicinity. I had a sinking feeling that I was going to have to emulate the grovelling approach which had seen me (in my contact lens days) crawling about on my hand and knees like the most abject pilgrim approaching some idolatrous shrine in the hope finding salvation – or a small piece of fugitive plastic which had sprung from my eye.

The factor which saved me from this humiliation was the simple fact that my glasses, invisible and light as they were, had photo chromatic lenses, so even my blurred eyesight was able to distinguish two dark ovals lying on the sand.

After such emotionally draining excitement I felt that I deserved my restoratively bracing laze as the wind built up tiny dunes of fine sand against each individual hair on my legs. Breathing was a particularly mineral and gritty experience. Any movement released a part of the frisky towel which proceeded, in almost comic book fashion, to belabour me with a reiterated series of slaps. But we Brits are used to combative sun bathing and, while the sun shines (if only fitfully) it will take more than a mere gale to make us desist.

When the sun disappeared: I went. There are, after all, limits.

My experiments with the camera continue. I have now discovered how to adjust the shutter speed and the aperture manually – but I have yet to take a better picture with my tinkerings than the camera produces on the automatic setting!

I aspire!