Fotos

tyro (30513) 2009-07-30 17:07

Hi, Bev,

Having seen pictures of your husband and his colleague as haaf fishermen, I can now appeciate the environment in which they work. I suppose this picture might be considered as a "record shot", showing the haaf fishermen heading off over the sands to the channel where they are about to lay their nets and fish, but it is a fine picture anyway; well exposed and sharp and with fine colours.

Perhaps your note should have included a bit more information about those vertical poles which dominate the picture and the nets between them - are they nets laid by haaf fishermen or are they something quite different?

You said in a recent posting that you were planning to go out with the fishermen - I'm looking forward to seeing some "up close" pictures of these men at work. The Solway here looks a peaceful place but I can't help but think that it it must be a very dangerous place in poorer weather.

I watched Neil Oliver tonight on "Coast" on the telly as he crept around the coasts of Cornwall and south Wales - I was thinking about haaf fishermen - perhaps we'll see something of them when the BBC cameras reach as far north as the Solway?

Kind Regards,

John.

graffer (1800) 2009-07-31 3:20

Hello Bev,

Many, many years ago, in my youth, I had a shrimping net which I would push along the shallow sea water more in hope than in anticipation. I did occasional catch some shrimps though.

That was a boy's toy! But these are really a strong man's bit of kit.

Your composition divides neatly into horizontal thirds. The key element, in the foreground, is the net spread out on the grass, which anchors the picture nicely, and this is echoed by the line of the long net on poles on the sand.

The diagonal of the nearer fisherman's net is the one thing to disrupt the parallelism of the rest of the image – in doing so it brings life to the composition.

The grey threatening sky tops it all off nicely.

Well done!

Kind regards,

Peter.