Beach creatures

Although I'm not much of an ocean man, I do enjoy the occasional coastside stroll (especially out of season). The sandy beaches of western France (here on the coast of Vendée, between Bordeaux and Nantes) recently gave me a few interesting forms to work with, some more figurative than others...

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A nice set Serge. These are the kind of shots I look out for as well! The mono conversion works for these IMO as does your choice of a white border.

Lovely textures make these special.

Very artistic , and surprisingly, very calming to look at.

A beautiful fine art set.

Great set this Serge... fine observations all... imagine you had quite a lot of fun with the orientations of these... strong graphic images, but lightly processed, without hitting the contrast button too hard... which gives them all a sense of optimism for me... a bit of a rorschach test too, this... see loads of different things... a mixture mostly of creatures and celestial bodies for me... fish in 2, big mouthed lizard in 3, swordfish in 6, comet in 4 and 7... oh, and a teepee in 8... but that's just me... Steve (Lubbyman) wrote in a post recently re the difference between questions and answers in a photograph, and there's plenty of questions in these... I also like how you've kept in the tiny (seaweed?) trail lines, which give a nice random element... 1 though is my partic favourite... strong, bold and graphic... top stuff all round...

Best

Really like no.4. The first 3 don't have the contrast that the 4th has and that adds to the image. 8 I really like also.

Thank you all.

Andy, yes, monochrome is my preferred means of photographic expression, and I find a white border (or whitish when printing - the paper I use is slightly off-white) generally helps the eye focus on the monochrome nature of the image (not to mention its composition). Not that everyone agrees with this...

John, 'special' is always (well, almost always) a nice word to hear concerning one's artistic endeavours - thanks.

Peter, calm is a feeling I'm always happy to have conveyed - one that I more often than not actively seek when on a photographic spree.

Defragged - much appreciated.

Bill, thanks for your thoughts. I'm happy the end results look lightly processed, they did take some work though, a bit more than I thought. 'The Rorschach element' - a fitting title for the set, I'd say But that only really came into play when I started working on them. On site as I was pressing the shutter my feeling was one of capturing different states of fleeing time... but then the shapes just jumped out at me and I went from there. Thanks for the lizard idea, I wondered what it could be! Also I can see the teepee quite well, as it came out to me as a Native American feathered chief, the one above being his squaw and their children (but most of these were comets also at some point). I believe 1 is my favorite too, for its undefined nature...

Gareth, I can see how the first three can seem to stand somewhat apart from the rest. I did try different amounts of contrast, but these were better left as they are here for my taste. I admit the contrast/microcontrast adjustment was a delicate task...

#4 is the perfect balance of subject and contrast for me. I think the rest are great too but 4 stands out to me.

Thanks for looking, Ben, happy you enjoyed them.