The final work

 

 

 Land art is all about going into nature and responding to and exploring what is already there. I planned the day around the tide cycle, during spring tides the beach is covered in water at sunrise and sunset which is the best light for protographing the work. So i picked a day coming off the neap tides as this is when the sand is exposed at sunrise and sunset. It also gave me a couple of days to photgraph the peice as it interacts with the environment and the general public.  So i went out the night before planned the location. I also invited some friends to come and be a part of the creating of the sculpture.  



 

 

.    So early the next morning i went out to start digging. It took 8 hours to dig which was absolutely grueling. Digging 8 hrs in the hot build up sun, i went through 15litres of water. I really enjoyed working with the different colours and textures. I also took down a couple of shovels to provide an opportunity for anyone who may have been interested to help out with the work. As i was building the work lots of people came and talked about it and engaeed with the work.    

After going hard digging all day, more people arrived to help out. This turned into a really fun afternoon with everyone helping to get it finished before sunset in order to photograph it in the ideal light. I really enjoyed that aspect of the work incorporating principles of relational aesthetics. It was a lot more enjoyable working along side others and the feedback i got from all those who where involved was really positive.

  

We got the sculpture finished by the low rich afternoon light which casts shadows over the ripples in the sand. It was a really great feeling for everyone to step back and watch how the peice interacted witht he beutiful afternoon light.

 

 

 

 I used photographed the work with a Canon 50d using a 24-105mm L series lense. To get a perfect panorama i used a Realloy right stuff panoramic head for my tripod. This allows me to shoot multiple photos with very little distortion rotating the lense around the nodal point. I used a Cokin neutral density gradiant filters over the front of my lense which allowed me to get the detail in the foregraound and a balanced exposure for the sky. This created a really interesting affect.





 After the sun had gone down and the beutiful pastel colours of the sunset came out, it created the low light conditions to shoot some slow exposure shots. So i got everyone to run around the sculpture and i photraphed a stitched panorama using a very low shutter speed. In shooting a long exposure panorama in low light, i had to get the ballens right. If you expose the photo too long, the light changes by the time you get around the the final frame in the panorama and it doesn't stitch properly. This photo encapsulates the sense of fun and enjoyment that was had in everyone being a part of the artwork.