As precious as childhood itself are old photographs of children on the beach. The following pictures — a sequel to my blog post of 26th July 2019, The joy of childhood and the sea celebrated in art — tell of happy days. However, they have a certain poignancy which calls to mind a poem written by one of England’s best known poets.
Vintage photographs are valuable artefacts insofar as they preserve the memory of people and things that otherwise would slip into oblivion. Some old pictures, however, do much more: they are veritable works of art. The following are six such photographs. They are timeless reminders of the beauty and power of the sea, as worthy of being kept for posterity as the seascapes of famous painters.
I recently decided to do a new series of seashell photographs. Men drool over beautiful cars, but I am more fascinated with shells. As for photography, I see it as a new (at least for me) mode of expression — a respite from the sometimes arduous task of wresting with words. I hope you enjoy viewing the collection.
Early this February, I invited photographers on Facebook to submit their photographic artworks depicting the sea for a special Marine Café Blog feature. The idea was to show how one can use digital technology to extend the boundaries of the imagination and create memorable images. Here, in no particular order, are the most striking of the works submitted:
Marine Café Blog will be paying tribute to the sea and the power of digital photography in an upcoming special feature with the theme, Seascapes in Photographic Art. You can be one of the photographer-artists featured. Kindly read the following guidelines for participants:
In mid-January, I issued a call on social media for outstanding waterfront photographs. This was not a contest with prizes for the winners, but a simple celebration of life on the waterfront. A good number of entries came in, all of them meritorous. However, ten pictures stood out because of their composition, content and overall impact.
There are few places in a town or city that are more interesting than the waterfront. Shopping malls certainly do not have the same kind of energy and atmosphere one finds on wharves and piers, on boardwalks and esplanades. With this in mind, Marine Café Blog is inviting all photographers to submit their photos for an upcoming special feature.
The beach held a strong attraction for the French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet. In 1868 he wrote to his friend Frédéric Bazille from Étretat, a coastal town in northern France: “I pass my time in the open air on the beach when it is really heavy weather or when the boats go out fishing…” Beaches in times of war are something else, however.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; ~ John Masefield, ‘Sea Fever’ Like the speaker in John Masefield's famous poem, Eugene Rutter (pictured above) has found the “call of the running...
New York is a great city. Even Leon Trotsky, the rabid Marxist revolutionary, was impressed. He wrote in his 1930 memoir, My Life: Here I was in New York, city of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automatism, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that...
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940) was an American photographer and sociologist who documented the lives of immigrants and workers in early 20th-century America. His 1920 photograph of an old sailor (shown above) is part of the vast Hine collection in the Library of...
A lighthouse is more than what the Cambridge Dictionary says it is: “a tall structure by the sea with a flashing light that warns ships of dangerous rocks or shows them the way into a port.” It serves to inspire writers, painters, photographers and anybody whose mind...