Skip to main content

You've Never seen Waves Like this Before



#Photography #RachaelTalibart  #Waves

Photographer Rachael Talibart grew up in West Essex, on England's southeast coast and often went sailing on her father's sailboat in the summer. Her fascination with the sea continued when she became a photographer and her new series Sirens reflects that. Each image is named after a mythological-esque figure. This one is called Niobe Photo. Rachael Talibart
Growing up in southeast England, Rachael Talibart spent several weeks every summer on her father’s sailboat, exploring the coastlines of France and the Netherlands. These family voyages were meant as a vacation, although Talibart never had much fun—she was a "shockingly bad sailor" who was almost constantly seasick. Because her nausea was worse inside the boat, she spent most of her time alone in the cockpit, looking out over the ocean.
"I spent ages staring at the waves," she remembers. "I used to imagine creatures in the sea."
Talibart, now a celebrated photographer, remains both frightened and fascinated by the sea, a tension she explores in her new series, Sirens, which was recently shortlisted for a Sony World Photography Award and will go on exhibition at the Sohn Fine Art Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts in September. The visually sumptuous photographs were all taken on Newhaven Beach in East Sussex, which Talibart began visiting weekly in 2016, arriving at dawn and waiting hours in hopes of catching the perfect light and weather.
One day in February 2016, during Storm Imogen, everything came together. Thanks to an extra high tide, a strong wind, and a sun that kept breaking through the clouds, the waves were large and crashing—and perfectly lit. Lying on her back, her feet to the ocean, Talibart used telescopic lenses and an ultra-fast 1,000 frames/second shutter speed to capture the towers and troughs of foam-flecked seawater. All those hours and days studying the sea had prepared her. "It’s about understanding the sea, knowing when a wave is coming, being able to predict what it’s likely to do so I can get the shot," she explains.
Thanks to their dramatic lighting, the waves look almost sculptural. "We never see that with our eyes, because the waves’ movement stops us from noticing the incredible shapes," Talibart points out. "By using a fast shutter speed, I can freeze that motion." She began shooting the series in black and white, her preferred palette, but in October 2017, during Storm Brian, she switched over to near-monochromatic, desaturated color to capture the unexpected bursts of green she began noticing in the waves.
Talibart still can’t help thinking of sea creatures when she looks at the photographs. Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, she titled the series Sirens and gave each image the name of a mythological god or goddess. And although she avoids boats these days—she still gets seasick—Talibart credits her childhood sailing adventures with her ocean obsession.
"A part of me is still half-afraid of the sea," she admits. "There’s a fascination and a love for it, but there’s also fear."
      By MICHAEL HARDY -05.31.18

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are we really listening to what MLK had to say?

#MartinLutherKingJr #MLK #CivilRights #DrKing In 2020, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls in a national election year, one that reminds us of the importance of voting rights, citizenship and political activism to the health of our democracy. King imagined America as a "beloved community" capable of defeating what he characterized as the triple threats of racism, militarism and materialism. The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, alongside the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision, represents the crown jewels of the civil rights movement's heroic period. Yet King quickly realized that policy transformations alone, including the right to vote, would be insufficient in realizing his goal of institutionalizing radical black citizenship toward the creation of the "beloved community." King argued that justice was what love looked like in public. 2020 also marks the 55th anniversary of the passage of the Voting...

A Single Dose of CBD Reset the Brains of People at High Risk of Psychosis

#CBD #Psychosis #MentalHealth #Medicine #Neuroscience #Psychology #Weed P sychosis, a severe mental disorder characterized by a loss of grip on reality,  can include unsettling hallucinations and delusions . As no one’s been able to pin down a single cause of psychosis, it’s been even harder to pin down a treatment. But researchers behind a new JAMA Psychiatry study seem to be on the right track. In the study, they report that they’ve found a way to reset the psychosis-afflicted brain using an unlikely plant: marijuana. Researchers are increasingly finding evidence that the  active components  of marijuana can help ease symptoms in people with  epileptic seizures ,  chronic pain , and  post-traumatic stress disorder , but there’s much to be learned about its relationship to psychosis. The most well-known  cannabinoid  Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol — better known as THC — has  previously been linked  to the development of psychosis...

Coping With Moods: The Challenge of the Turbulent Mind

#Mood #Impulses #selfregulate #selfsoothe  #Triple5LightTherapy #BlackMaleTherapist #Psychotherapy The power of moods and impulses can be overwhelming, but we can learn to self-regulate and self-soothe through awareness practices like meditation and mindfulness. By developing a healthy dialogue with our emotional nature, we can access deeper parts of ourselves and become more resilient in the face of stress and pressure. Rather than being swept away by our ever-shifting moods, we can learn to pause and reflect before acting. by Gillian McCann, Ph.D., and Gitte Bechsgaard, RP

The crazy story of how ‘Stockholm syndrome’ got its name

#Movies #Hostage #PattyHearst #Psychology #StockholmSyndrome #Sweeden “Is there something wrong with me? Why don’t I hate them?” In 1973, 21-year-old Elisabeth Oldgren posed this question to a psychiatrist in the wake of a robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, in which she and three other bank workers had been held hostage from Aug. 23-28. As the standoff neared an end, police were perplexed by the victims’ concern for their two captors: Despite cops’ orders that the hostages be the first to leave the bank vault in which they’d all been holed up, all four refused. ame> “Jan and Clark [the criminals] go first — you’ll gun them down if we do!” 23-year-old Kristin Ehnmark yelled back. The nationwide spectacle led to the genesis of the term “Stockholm syndrome,” in which a person held against their will comes to sympathize deeply with their abductor. In America, the phrase is more commonly associated with the 1974 case of Patty Hearst, the kidnapped heiress turned bank robber. It h...