Today I want to offer you an insight into one of my recent photo projects for a change. “A Desert of Waves, A Wilderness of Water” is a series of 13 abstract seascapes I created using the Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) technique. Thunderous seas turn into liquid silk.
A few weeks ago, I dreamed about huge waves crashing thunderously on a rugged beach. The full moon, high in the pitch-black sky, illuminated an alien landscape.
No trees or shrubs, no dwellings, no boats. No people. No animals or birds (I knew this in my dream). An utterly deserted landscape, devoid of any life. Nothing but the huge rocks and the surf glittering like tiny diamonds in the moonshine. Nothing but the endless rumbling of the waves and the cold silvery moon. “A desert of waves, a wilderness of water” (Langston Hughes).
The dream made such an impression on me that it haunted me for several days. I couldn’t get that desolate landscape out of my mind. So, I did what any artist would do: set to work. I wanted to capture that landscape in my mind in a series of photos, and I knew it wouldn’t be realistic photos from the beginning. The atmosphere called for something else.
As luck would have it, we live by the sea. So every day, I would go down to the beach and experiment with ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). The light, the color of the sea, the clouds, they all factor in. I knew how I wanted the photos to look like; I tested different settings and motions; I learned patience. And got the photos I wanted.
When I move the camera during 0.5 to 2 second exposures, the energy of the sea becomes pure color, rhythm, and texture. Sharp horizons, foam crests, and clear wave shapes disappear. What’s left are flowing, painterly images that feel more like silk, smoke, or desert dunes than water.
The colors are subtle but bright. Deep indigos and cool steel-greys fill the shadows. Warm amber and burnt orange, reflected from sunlit rocks, shine through the lower layers like fire under ice. Blurred, overlapping strokes give a hypnotic sense of constant motion, like a tide that never ends. Edges fade, shapes blend, and the sea feels weightless and soft, almost like fabric.
I took these photos along the coast, a stone’s throw from our house, during the calm hours of dawn and dusk. Each image is a single in-camera exposure. There is no digital painting, no layering, and no added blur afterward. No AI (it’s sad you have to say this these days). What you see is exactly what the moving lens captured in that brief moment.
The title shows the main paradox: a desert made of waves, a wilderness made only of water, mixing dryness with wetness and emptiness with movement. This series invites you to move beyond literal images. Instead, it encourages you to feel the ocean’s rhythm, offering an abstract look at movement, light, and the beauty of letting go.
Origin of the Phrase “A Desert of Waves, A Wilderness of Water”
The phrase originates from the poem “Long Trip” by the renowned African American poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967). It was first published in 1926 as part of his seminal collection “The Weary Blues”. The full poem reads:
The sea is a wilderness of waves,
A desert of water.
We dip and dive,
Rise and roll,
Hide and are hidden
On the sea.
Day, night,
Night, day,
The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.
This evocative imagery captures the vast, untamed expanse of the ocean, evoking themes of isolation, rhythm, and perpetual motion that are recurrent in Hughes’s work, particularly in pieces inspired by his experiences near waterfronts and as a young seaman. The poem reflects the Harlem Renaissance era’s exploration of African American identity and the natural world’s metaphors for human endurance.
As an artist, you’re always struggling to create the vision in your mind in whatever medium you’re working in, only to fail when you do – more often than not. But this was one of these dream projects where I didn’t fail. I love how the photos turned out.
You can see the rest of the photos in my photo gallery and buy prints in my online shop if you like them too.
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