_{…If you don`t want to drown in this muddy water
you will have to move
you must learn how to swim
you have to have a plan
and you gotta watch out for what they say
`cause they...sometimes they say:
take it easy
take it easy, now
but i know that
waking up ain’t easy, no
when you`re lonely} [link]

This happens to be one of the songs that never really leave me. For years… It plays in my head every morning when I wake up alone. Original plan was to name the photo “Sands of Time” but there happen to be lots of deviations going by that name.

This shot was taken at Porto Lagos near Lake Vistonida. Having lived most of my life on a rocky island I was always fascinated by shots of sandy beaches after low tide when the seawater has withdrawn leaving the sand wet and “wrinkled”. The day we arrived at Porto Lagos we weren’t sure if we would find the place interesting enough to stay but upon seeing this beach with this vast space of “carved” sand I was ready to use all available means to convince *KirlianCamera that we should stay and spend the next sunrise there. Νo need for that though. When I turned to face him he already had that look on his face as if he were already composing shots!

We spent the next two sunrises on that beach, splashing around the cold waters. I found out soon enough that despite the beauty of the place it was a bit difficult to find a composition I liked. I didn’t want the lines to run diagonally, I wanted them to converge to the center of the image and I didn’t want them to point at just an empty space. I also wanted a low angle point of view and the fact that the sky was not interesting on the second morning was a bit of a help since I wasn’t tempted to include much of it in the composition. A useful lesson learned on those two days: carrying with you some (unused!) garbage bags when in such dump places can prove VERY useful. You can lay them on the wet sand and place your bag on them without worrying that you’ll take home a considerable amount of the sand and seawater on your bag!

Minimal contrast and levels adjusted during RAW conversion in Nikon Capture NX2 .

Hope you enjoy your visit here!

PS This one is for =Svision who has some great shots of such beaches!

Location: Porto Lagos, lake Vistonida

<sub>tech stuff

Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: Tokina 12-24mm f/4 AT-X AF Pro DX @12mm
Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 58"
ISO: 200
Filters: Lee 3 stop soft grad ND (0.9), B+W 77E 110 (10 stop ND)</sub>