Though I don’t take enough of them, I do love long exposures. The effect it has on the elements, the mood it gives a scene, how it can transform the ordinary into the surreal and the way it shows time differently. Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

This is the north end of Baie des Tortues (Turtle Bay) located in Bourail next to La Roche Percée (Pierced Rock). Only a two hour drive from Noumea, the Capital of New Caledonia. This area is very popular with tourists and locals and renowned for two landmarks, the Roche Percée (Pierced Rock) and the Bonhomme (the Man). The Roche Percée is a peninsula and a detached suburb of Bourail, known as one of the only surf spots in New Caledonia. And, it is also a cliff with a hole that runs through it from the Roche Percée beach to Baie des Tortues beach, accessible only at low tides. The Bonhomme is a huge monolith of hard quartz sculpted by the waves to resemble a man’s head wearing a hat. Those same waves render it vulnerable as they erode the base threatening it’s collapse. The waves have already eroded a good part of the cliff mentioned above. A yearly phenomenon also occurs on these same two beaches in late January, early February… turtle nesting season.

The nesting season was one of the reasons we were up here and photography was another of those reasons. We’d decided to go for a stroll along the beach of Turtle Bay and maybe capture a sunset. No such luck with that but I did come home with this blue hour photograph. The two minute long exposure turned this frantic scene of choppy waters and threatening clouds into a calm, tranquil, minimalist image. Even the colours are minimal with their tones of blue and the faint touch of orange/red in the sky. The two minute exposure wouldn’t have been possible without the Little Stopper, a 6 stop neutral density filter, from LEE Filters. Without it, only a two second exposure was possible and wouldn’t have given me that misty water and silky smooth clouds. Except for a lot of cleaning up, there was very little editing done. I did edit a black and white version but I felt the contrast was too harsh and thus stuck with the subtler blue tone version.

I’ll edit a photo of the Bonhomme I took about a week before this one and share it on the next blog post. Hope you’ll check it out. Ciao for now.