Behind the Lens: Medusa

This photo is one of a series called Sirens, photographs of monstrous storm waves named after mythological beings. I grew up sailing and would often pass long voyages by watching the waves and imagining strange creatures in the shapes, telling myself stories in the way children do.

It isn’t so surprising, then, that I have made the ocean, and specifically waves, the focus of my photography. Sirens was born out of long winters revisiting a storm beach on England’s south coast.

By the time I captured Medusa, I had already published much of the project but Storm Brian, in October 2017, brought particularly good light and added several of the most popular images in the series. This is probably my favourite because it most closely connects to a myth, that of Medusa, the maiden cursed to have snakes for hair and whose gaze could turn men to stone. 

The skills needed for this sort of photography are more like those needed for wildlife or sports than for landscape. I had a target shutter speed of 1/1000s and wanted a fairly narrow aperture to get as much detail as possible front to back. Timing was everything, and I had to concentrate hard not to miss the best shapes.

It helped that I had by then spent a great many days at that location in storms, so I had a reasonable idea of when a good wave might be coming. It was important to get as low as I could so that the waves stood proud of the horizon.

This also helped me cope with the force 10 winds - holding the camera steady and shooting for almost six hours was a good biceps workout! The biggest challenge came from the spray. The wind was almost directly on shore, blowing spray straight onto the lens. I wouldn’t have captured any decent frames without my lens hood, but I still had to spend a lot of time cleaning the glass.

I do all my processing in Lightroom. As you might imagine, I made a lot of photos that day, so I had a job on my hands going through them. I don’t enjoy trying to create good light when there wasn’t any in the frame so, going through the images captured, I sought great shapes with great light.

Medusa was the first frame I edited from that day. I kept things natural, making slight tonal adjustments only with just a nudge of clarity.