Salt, Sand, and Shutter Speeds: A Windy Day in Chiba
It was a spontaneous urge on random afternoon: I wanted to photograph some surfers against the Pacific coast. As a portrait photographer in Tokyo, I spend a lot of time in controlled environments or urban settings, but this time, I was feeling the pull of the coast.
Luckily, the connection was easy to make and it didn't take very long to find a few surfers. Some long time acquaintances of my wife are regulars to the waves of Chiba Prefecture's Pacific coast, and they were plenty eager to have some photos done.
As I was leaving the house on the day of the shoot, the weather looked good. It was warm, there was very little wind, and there weren't many clouds in the sky. However I knew from past experience, despite a relatively short distance out to the Pacific coast, the weather could very well be quite different once I got there.
Sure enough, arriving to the coast and stepping out of the car revealed some less than ideal shooting conditions. There was a strong wind blowing off the water—a cold, salty, mist-throwing, sand blowing, gusting wind.
This meant that the lighting modifiers I had intended to use were not coming out of the car. Soft boxes, umbrellas, and reflectors just don't get along well with heavy winds. I also had a feeling that sand, salt, and water are not good for the inside of the camera, the conditions meant that I would not be separating any lenses from the camera body.
It didn't look great, but I figured that I was already there and should see what could be made of it. So, I pulled out the protector filter that had been sitting unused in my bag for years, screwed it onto my choice of lens for the shoot, grabbed one small flash, and headed into the wind.
Once we began, I quickly forgot about the wind gusts, the cold, the salty seawater in my face, the sand in my eyes and between my teeth, and shot away for the better part of an hour and a half. All those little annoyances tend to fade away when doing what you enjoy.
In the end, the images I took away from the shoot were not what I had originally imagined. Conditions forced a few changes, but that is how it usually goes. In my experience, coming home with the exact image you envisioned is the exception; coming home with something better because you adapted is the goal.
Every shoot—whether lifestyle portraits on the streets of Tokyo or a coastal surf shoot—is a learning experience. I walked away with more than just photos; I left with a refined perspective for my next portrait session.
