FLUID DYNAMICS
Alright. I have to admit I am dazzled by size. An avid seeker of vertical thrust, endlessly scanning for tell tales signs of the BIG one, I fairly swoon at the power behind the foamy ejaculate spewed carelessly over the wet black rock. But it’s harder than you’d think to predict when they will come. You wait for telltale signs, the rising swell, the glistening tip, the thunderous groan, but appearances can be deceiving. If the energy is spent too soon, or the angle is off, you can miss the shuddering climax that shoots above your head completely...
When frustration gets the better of me, I know I need to shift my focus, consider the horizontal rather than vertical plane. I look to the coy cleft, the holy hollow, the inviting orifice that delivers the big O as that viscous blue aperture constricts from open wall to closing keyhole with breathtaking beauty...
“I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a--"
--well yes, trees are quite lovely, but today I’m thinking about the sea... Specifically the wave, Pythagorean perfection of form found in the fleeting golden section as crests spiral and spume arches artfully toward the sky...
I try counting waves, looking for patterns behind the blizzard of white water droplets exploding outside our door. If I could anticipate the sets I could have my camera poised and ready to capture the lyrical curling breaks which, at their most exuberant, send sea spray fifty feet or more into the air, higher than the cliffs and even the palm trees that cling to them... then fall, trailing iridescent rainbow hues in the mist...
IF.
But this is not bath water spilling gently onto uniformly sloping sand. No simple equation could predict the rhythm of these roaring rollers colliding with the rugged island coast. Rendered by the incalculable physics of perpetually shifting volume and velocity over the complex contours of ancient volcanic sea bed, prehistoric lava tubes, crumbling inclines and underwater caves, waves are subject to far more factors than momentum, slope and gravity. Wind speeds oscillate, tides and currents reverse daily, seasonally, all subject to global and local lunar and meteorological events, seismic tremors, refraction, interference, density, erosion, and the drag of sediment...
Too late. The wall of water that blots out the visible horizon and sky thru the sliding glass door, flashing unexpected light into the small dim room., signifies that the highest, fullest, most dramatic display of the latest wave train is now past--before I even knew it was approaching--defying my best efforts to fix fluid dynamic reality into replicable pixels. For all my photographic patience and passion, I’m confounded and humbled by a singularly elusive field of subjects, diving tropic birds, surfacing sea turtles, and the rising and falling water itself, the surging, spilling, curving, curling, pitching and plunging of vast interlacing oceanic impulses.
Yet the ocean, in her infinite generosity, will continue to bestow her mesmerizing gifts of natural grace and awe inspiring power for as long as sea and islands exist. So I try again... and again, and again to freeze the photographic frame on swirling liquid joy the colors of heaven itself--indigo, turquoise, aquamarine... I celebrate the incessant song of booming surf, a wild, orgasmic beauty that reverberates in the deep red tides and hidden caverns of my own flesh and bone...