This photograph took gold in the Advanced Bonus: Outdoor freestyle catagory which allowed for digital manipulation. The picture itself is part chance, part thoughtful insight and a large amount of improvising. Whilst on diving holiday on the beautiful coast Mozambique, my fiancé and I had just got engaged, but unfortunately the first couple of days diving were ruined by pretty rotten weather, a tropical storm had raged through the area the days preceding the trip. But late on the first day it stopped raining long enough to take a romantic stroll on the beach (with cameras of course), on which we discovered that amazing tree washed up on the beach, and instantly I hoped to capture something equivalent with such a gift of nature presented to me.

I took a few shots moving around the subject, but the lighting was bad and the beach was churned up by daily activities. Still, I got a good look at the subject and hoped in the next few days I would be able to stroll down early morning on a beautiful blue-skied day, just after the tide had gone out and in perfect light. I had this vision to get an abstract shot from the same angle with a flat blue sea, rich blue sky and soft brown beach, although I never envisaged staging it with a person in. As you can guess the weather never played ball and so the shot never happened, however, whilst walking with my fiancé on a clean empty beach later in the week, I suddenly thought that perhaps playing around with a shot with a person as subject could possibly be a great alternative idea to get a decent result if I wasn't able to get the desired abstract-blue-beige-deserted-beach shot. I positioned myself in what I had picked as the best angle to get the full sweeping shape of the log, and then asked my fiancé to pose on the log.

She carefully saddled up on the log and dutifully assumed a few different poses, very creatively I might add, she has often posed for me and I'm blessed in that regard to have such an accepting, creative (and beautiful) model. The luckiest bit, I guess, was the interchangeable light as I had no way to control it, the cloud cover was heavy but fortunately there was no high hazy clouds, so as gaps appeared in the clouds, small dramatic 'spotlights' would appear around the beach. This shot was taken just as a break appeared long enough to bath only the main subject in extra light and create a few mild shadows. I then enhanced the light and shadows in post-processing, and deepened the heavy cloudy background for a more dramatic effect, I really liked the contradiction it created, and the visual impact.

This photograph took gold in the Advanced Bonus: Outdoor freestyle catagory which allowed for digital manipulation. The picture itself is part chance, part thoughtful insight and a large amount of improvising. Whilst on diving holiday on the beautiful coast Mozambique, my fiancé and I had just got engaged, but unfortunately the first couple of days diving were ruined by pretty rotten weather, a tropical storm had raged through the area the days preceding the trip. But late on the first day it stopped raining long enough to take a romantic stroll on the beach (with cameras of course), on which we discovered that amazing tree washed up on the beach, and instantly I hoped to capture something equivalent with such a gift of nature presented to me.

I took a few shots moving around the subject, but the lighting was bad and the beach was churned up by daily activities. Still, I got a good look at the subject and hoped in the next few days I would be able to stroll down early morning on a beautiful blue-skied day, just after the tide had gone out and in perfect light. I had this vision to get an abstract shot from the same angle with a flat blue sea, rich blue sky and soft brown beach, although I never envisaged staging it with a person in. As you can guess the weather never played ball and so the shot never happened, however, whilst walking with my fiancé on a clean empty beach later in the week, I suddenly thought that perhaps playing around with a shot with a person as subject could possibly be a great alternative idea to get a decent result if I wasn't able to get the desired abstract-blue-beige-deserted-beach shot. I positioned myself in what I had picked as the best angle to get the full sweeping shape of the log, and then asked my fiancé to pose on the log.

She carefully saddled up on the log and dutifully assumed a few different poses, very creatively I might add, she has often posed for me and I'm blessed in that regard to have such an accepting, creative (and beautiful) model. The luckiest bit, I guess, was the interchangeable light as I had no way to control it, the cloud cover was heavy but fortunately there was no high hazy clouds, so as gaps appeared in the clouds, small dramatic 'spotlights' would appear around the beach. This shot was taken just as a break appeared long enough to bath only the main subject in extra light and create a few mild shadows. I then enhanced the light and shadows in post-processing, and deepened the heavy cloudy background for a more dramatic effect, I really liked the contradiction it created, and the visual impact.