...the Sea Whisper'd Me

On day 15 of Beyond Layers Kim gave us a prompt: Whisper. It was very interesting to start creating from a word-prompt only. The first thing that popped into my mind was the finishing line of Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, and although I tried to find easier things that would've whispered to me, I couldn't shake the thought. That's Whitman for me, anytime. You wish you could get away from his wordiness and heaviness and all, but the words just keep rolling in my head and annoying as it is, I cannot help loving them. It's not a passionate love, but a persistent one. Very persistent.

So it had to be sea-related, but of course I knew I had no photo in the archives to convey the mood of the poem, and couldn't possibly go and shoot by the seaside, as it happens to be rather far away from here.

I decided, then, to go by the words only, not the poem. Perhaps I'll sometime get back to the poem, but I think that has to be done in photomanipulation... But here's the whispered result.

...the Sea Whisper'd Me

It's a picture taken on Baltic Sea, on 16 May this year, when we had just left Lübeck on our homeward journey. Actually, I was very happy the sea only whispered this time, instead of roaring. The North Sea between IJmuiden and Newcastle twelve days previously was rather rough, and I had my first experience of sea-sickness. Thinking about it now, it could have been much worse, but it felt like the end of the world at the time. At least I now know first-hand what sea-sickness is.

But back to the picture - used the textures here to make it even softer and at times I thought I'd lose the whole image when toning it down, but then, it's meant to be a whisper.

Resources used:
texture Optional by Jerry Jones
texture Awaken by Kim Klassen
gradient Sea Dreams 15 by ElvenSword

 And here's the recipe.

How annoyingly simple the recipe makes it look, again, and how much tweaking went into each step...