Dreaming Dunes No. 1
I took this photograph in February 2011 during our family vacation on Gran Canaria. We have been returning to the same place every year since our son was born in 2006. I know that family holiday and landscape photography do not necessary match together, but I am quite lucky that my loved family members let me spend some mornings alone by the Atlantic Ocean cost and focus on my photography. This year was quite tough for me since the weather conditions were not in favor to me and I was quite disappointed already on the very first morning since I did not get the chance to take the photographs I was pre-visualizing back home. Unfortunately, the same weather conditions had persisted also during my second morning and cloudless blue sky forced me to rethink my objectives and I went to explore nearby sand dunes, which is very beautiful small area with a lot of photo possibilities, but very often visited by many tourists so the amazing dunes structures are destroyed by footprints and in the worse case by trash left over by some irresponsible people.
Thanks to my early morning start I was walking over the dunes almost alone. Therefore, I had good chance to relax and think about my photographs. My intention was to capture the dunes in little bit different way, and since the sunshine was getting stronger and stronger I was trying to imagine how hard it must be to walk in real desert without water and chance to reach civilization. Fortunately for me, it was not my case, so I was able to fully concentrate on finding the right shapes and structures for my photographs instead of oasis with water:)
I took with me only the analog camera Contax 645 with two lenses Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 45mm f/2.8, Carl Zeiss Planar T* 80mm f/2, and few roles of Kodak T-Max 100 black and white film. I have read a lot about the great sharpness and bokeh of Carl Zeiss lenses when stopped down, but I had never really tested it by myself before. This was really great opportunity for me to play with depth of field, manual focusing and try to see the world little bit differently. I have to say it was great fun and few days later back in Geneva, when I was previewing scans, I was very happy with my results. At the end, I have selected three photographs to start with a new series or let say project called “Dreaming Dunes” and this is the firsts photograph in the series and also my favorite one. Since, my wife already bought plain tickets for all of us to go back to Gran Canaria next winter I cannot wait to continue in this project and believe me I will go out there at any weather conditions, since the possibilities are endless and as I have learned this year the pre-visualization of desired photographs should not limit our imagination and improvisation when we get to actual location:)