Ocean & Seascape — Fine Art Photography by Paul Foley
Ocean & Seascape is an ongoing body of fine art photography exploring the Australian coast through water, weather, light and time.
I return to the edge of the ocean because it never quite repeats itself. A rock shelf can be almost still one morning and overwhelmed by storm surf the next. Clouds gather and disappear, water changes shape, and a familiar horizon can become unfamiliar in minutes.
Some photographs depend on recognising an instant—a wave exploding against rock, a rainbow appearing through rain, or a solitary figure stopping at the edge of the Pacific. Others rely on extended exposures, allowing seconds or minutes to accumulate until water becomes mist, people become traces and the landscape begins to move towards abstraction.
The photographs range from Newcastle and Redhead to Sydney, Bondi, Coledale, Werri Beach and the NSW South Coast. The locations matter, but they are not really the subject. I am more interested in what happens there: the meeting of light and weather, stillness and movement, permanence and change.
Sometimes the ocean is violent. Sometimes it becomes almost featureless.
Between those extremes I keep finding pictures.