A French photographer with a penchant for the ocean has captured a breathtaking photo of storm waves that appear to depict the face of Poseidon, wearing his crown, lurching from the depths.
He ended up capturing the god of the sea in a breathtaking collision of crashing waves.
“I arrived there around 12 p.m., it was low tide, and indeed the waves were big, but the swell would intensify in the afternoon,” Mr. Rivrin told The Epoch Times. “Around 6 p.m., night was about to fall and the waves were impressive. There was a whole series of waves for 10 to 15 minutes which took on particular shapes. They were huge.”
As waves crashed against the Lesconil breakwater, a harbor breakwater protecting the port and its boats, one wave, bigger than the rest, stood out.
“It was only when I got home that I discovered this image, and this face in the wave,” said Mr. Rivrin, who usually doesn’t name his images. “My goal is for people to own the image, to see what they want to see.”
However, upon seeing the image, there were people who strongly insisted on calling him “Poseidon.”
“I don’t know if I would have called it ‘Poseidon,’ myself, but since the public has appropriated it, it became natural to give it that name,” he said.
Mr. Rivrin’s journey from engineering into photography began 10 years ago, after taking a photo of an insect with a compact camera in his grandparents’ garden in Brittany. He was struck by the “aspect of capturing an ephemeral moment,” and, living in Grenoble at the time, he felt compelled to take photos of Brittany’s natural bounty each time he returned to the region.
Today, he divides his landscape photography into three major themes: winter, waves, and storms. Mr. Rivrin often makes a distinction between storms and waves because there are storms without waves and vice versa.
It “sounds quite paradoxical,” he said, but, owing to the Atlantic swell, a windy storm does not always mean big waves, so he likes to separate the two.
“A storm really has special sensations,” he said. “There is the rough aspect, with hail showers; the wind aspect; the cold aspect, since it is winter; and all the auditory sensations with the noise of the wind, waves that impact on rocks or dikes.
“All that is really something that I like, the adventure side in the storm, beyond the photographic aspect and the subject of the waves.”
Reflecting on his desire to capture waves in Bretagne, Mr. Rivrin said the sea has always attracted him.
“I grew up with my dad, who was a sailor ... with a photo of a lighthouse in a storm above my bed,” he said. “One day, I wanted to see it with my own eyes by going there to take pictures with other photographers.
“Off Finistère is the largest concentration of lighthouses in Europe. ... Each lighthouse has a story, attached to one or more lighthouse keepers. These are stories I read when I was little.”
In 2016, Mr. Rivrin took photos during the Ruzica storm at the Jument and Tévennec lighthouses from a helicopter.
“I adapt to the weather conditions,” he said. “I do not plan a specific place; it is the characteristic of the storm that determines where I will go.”
During these shoots, Mr. Rivirin tries to stay safe but still enjoys capturing images from the water’s edge as it allows him to show the full height of the wave.
“With a good knowledge of the terrain, I manage to go to places where it would be impossible to go otherwise,” he said. “I’ve happened to get wet by waves, but never swept away.”
Sharing more about his photography gear, Mr. Rivrin uses full-frame mirrorless Sony cameras, with focal lengths ranging from 16 to 100mm to cover any type of image, including wide-angle and closeup. Sometimes his subjects are more than 2 kilometers (approx. 1.2 miles) offshore. If he times a shot right and makes a good composition, he claims there is rarely a need for retouching.
“I never use flash; as soon as it’s gray, I’m not interested,” he said. “But the image of Poseidon made me change my mind a bit because you can still take beautiful images without light.”
Fascinated by the colors of Brittany, especially its sunrise and sunset hues and turquoise waters, Mr. Rivrin has been lucky enough to capture the aurora borealis at Mont Saint-Michel. He has traveled and given photography lessons with the French agency Photographes du Monde, and his photos of high tides in Saint-Malo in March 2022, taken by drone where the sea meets the city, made Paris Match magazine.
The global media’s embracing of ocean photography has changed the game for Mr. Rivrin and his peers.
“A few years ago, on the coast, we were two to three photographers, maximum, taking pictures of storms and waves,” he told The Epoch Times. “Now, it has become enormously democratized. I find it great to see people who, rather than staying at home when there is a storm and winds, go out to see the spectacle on the coast.
“Sharing my images, and making people want to come and see these landscapes in turn, whether it’s the storm or the turquoise waters, it makes me proud.”
