The Wilson's Beach Alternative (Blog)

The Wilson's Beach Alternative

My Brother and I were Standing in the middle of the straightest dirt road I could find, our car pulled over, hood in the air, and the sun rapidly setting over the horizon. You'd be forgiven to assume we'd broken down, and been stranded on  the side of the road, but we were far from broken down, in fact, the whole thing was just a set up for a photo.

When I first got my camera I took it everywhere. I had a seemingly endless supply of ideas, locations, and landscapes I wanted to make photos of, but I quickly realized that all my ideas were kind of the same. Landscape photography around these parts, though beautiful, quickly becomes stale. Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River make for lots of photo opportunities, but there's only so many sunsets and container ship photos you can take before it starts to get a little old

I had found the website 500px.com and learned that they had photo challenges, and although some of them didn't interest me or seemed out of my reach, one of them caught my eye. I can't remember exactly what the subject of the challenge was, but I knew the photo I wanted to submit. A silhouetted figure walking off into the sunset down a dirt road away from broken down vehicle, and we had just the location for it.

I had enlisted the help of my younger brother, as he had some experience using a camera, and I needed someone to frame the shot as I was to be the silhouetted figure walking off into the sunset. We set up and took several test shots as we waited for the sun to get low enough in the sky. Though the road was dirt, it was far from quiet. it was a short cut between two main roads cutting about 2 miles off anyone's commute back home. most people that drove by just waved, probably wondering why these two strange guys were out in the middle of dirt road making photos of a broken down minivan.

We weren't having the greatest of luck with our compositions. The sky was completely cloudless, making for a mix of either blown out backgrounds, or underexposed foregrounds. Our lack of experience and knowledge hindered us, and without a proper ND filter we were having a difficult time making a decent photo. We tried multiple angles, focal lengths, and camera settings, but it was obvious that we weren't going to walk away with any amazing shots from this locations.

About 30 minutes before sunset we had pretty much given up and lost interest. We were both over it, but neither one ready to tell the other. I can't remember who brought it up first, but the topic of a nearby beach came up, Wilson's Beach. Wilson's Beach is roughly 2000 feet of shoreline in Wilson's Bay on Lake Ontario. I spent many hot days at this beach as a kid, but my memories of it aren't exactly fond. It's a terrible beach. You may think of a beach as having warm blue water and sands of gold. Wilson's Beach was not that kind of beach. The water seemed perpetually cold, sea weed and algae littered the shoreline, a shoreline made up of mostly large stones on top of smaller stones. Walking the beach was like walking on lego's made of broken glass, despite all this, Wilson's Beach was a popular spot for locals looking to cool off from the summer sun, mostly because it was the only beach around.

Tired of our failed attempts to shoot directly into the sun on a dusty road to capture a poorly thought out image for a website neither of us cared much about, we decided to spend the last 30 minutes of sunset at Wilson's Beach, making photos of the sun setting over the lake. Being that it was a little later in the year the beach was completely empty so we had our pick of locations to make a photo. We set up a little more than half way down the beach where the rocky shores gave way to a... slightly less rocky shore, and began firing off shots at everything with the slightest bit of interest. I remember my brother going for shots including some trees and foliage, while I was still sticking to the silhouette theme, placing myself or my brother in the frame back dropped by the sunset over the lake.

Before to long the sun had completely set and all that was left were a few colors in the sky, this made me slow down a little. I could no longer do silhouette shots with my increasing shutter speeds, but I could get some long exposure shots of the water, and the sky. I set my camera up on one of the rocks that were scattered about the shore, I framed up some additions rocks as a foreground element, the water as a midground, and the sky as a background. I took several shots with varying shutter speeds, and the result was one of my favorite shots to that date, and continues to be one of my favorite shots today.

Most of my life I thought Wilson's Beach was an ugly, stone ridden, cold water disgrace of a beach, and I still think that, but now at least, I recognize it as more than a beach. The waves breaking over the stones, the colors in the sky, the endless waters as it reaches out into Lake Ontario, it's so much more than just a beach.

My brother moved away about 8 months later, He was the last of my immediate family to move out of New York State. The time I got to spend with him making these photos is something I'll always remember. Wilson's Beach is unchanged, its still a rock ridden, sea weedy cold water mess, but now I remember it fondly.