Safe Harbor

So three weeks ago I was drinking my morning coffee and watching the Erik Almas DVD. (must watch!) and drawing some sketches. Then these idea's came to mind. I come from a family of shipbuilders, and grown up in one of the biggest ports in the world. My father have always been drawn to the sea, and naturally my brother and I share this passion. When I was young and we went on vacation we where always near the coast, always look at small fishing harbors. If a good storm hit, we went to Hoek van Holland to see the ships struggle to get to port savvily. Ironically Allot of my family members died in one of the greatest tragedies in dutch history, the 1953 "Waternoodsramp". I don't know why we would like to get even near the ocean when a storm rages. So naturally we "Verolmes" have something with water and ships. I wanted to make a image of an ship getting to port in a large storm, I wanted it to feel a bit dreamy, and I wanted it to feel Dutch. Something people can connect with, yet don't really understand. After I made my first sketches, I went looking for suitable locations. My first priority was to find out if there where any lighthouses near Rotterdam. The closest one that would fit in my image was Scheveningen. Also the harbor had some great content for my image. So it took me 2 day's of shooting, 500 image's, 7 Psd's files and proximally 40 hours of photoshop, and here it is! My very first full composite photograph.