View From The Beach, Martin Heathcote

VIEW FROM THE BEACH

MARTIN HEATHCOTE LRPS

Like many photographers what and how I shoot changes as does how I process and present them. For some time, I have enjoyed taking silhouette images and converting to mono. Over time the content of those images has decreased, and my approach has become increasingly minimalist evolving into a style with almost pure black and white and little or no texture or midtones.

This became a specific project, which is continuing and evolving, of images captured from my local beach, Mersea Island, which is 5 minutes’ walk from my house with many taken during the daily, early morning dog walk. Apart from aiming to create very graphical images I also wanted to try and convey the expansiveness of the sea contrasting the relatively small size of both people and the objects created by people. When we entered lockdown, my walk became my allowed exercise and I shared the beach with others wanting to get outdoors. Thus, some of the images show people temporarily escaping lockdown on the beach or being on the water in some way.

So, what do you do with such a project other than perhaps use some of the more standalone images in club competitions or exhibitions? The risk is that most just remain as an unseen collection of 1s and 0s.

Japanese Stab Book

Along came one of the many online courses which the RPS started as a response to lockdown - namely book making.

In this case it was with Alex Hare and Lizzie Shepherd. We started with concertina books, a previously undiscovered gem of a way of enjoying a set of images, followed by Japanese Stab Books. The stab book format seemed well suited to the beach images so this became my first attempt at such a book. Bookmaking turns out to be a highly satisfying exercise, with the added benefit of presenting your work and ideas in an easily accessible and tactile manner.

Whether or not this book is successful is subjective but on a personal level bookmaking ticks many boxes on the satisfaction criteria list and is worthy of investigation if you have not tried it.