I’ve been wondering. Are foggy mornings where all you can see are waves (and a couple of seagulls) opportunities on which everybody else sees the world like I always see it (i.e. mainly focussed on waves), or do “normal people” just see the seagulls and, well, fog?

Below, for example, the first thing I notice are the wakes. And then possibly the birds creating them (since, of course, I am interested in what caused the waves) and the algae growing in the water (because I am looking down to see if there are more waves to see). But even looking at the picture now, I focus on the wakes and on how amazing it is that you see the middle one going all the way across the picture. And that the seagull in the front only started swimming at the middle of the image, since that’s where its wake starts.

I do like to have some birds or structures in my pictures for visual interest, but the reason I took the picture below was to show how foggy it actually was this morning. And how calm the Kiel fjord was with hardly any waves and therefore very nice reflections of even the flag pole. That is very unusual.

And then, in the image below, I finally spotted the Sweden ferry coming into Kiel port. I knew it had to be there because I had heard the engine for a couple of minutes already and it sounded very close, but it was nowhere to be seen. Can you spot the blue underwater hull and possible the blue writing saying Stena Line at the lower end of the upper third of the picture? But the reason I took that picture was mainly so that, when talking about the wake later (and of course I set out to take pictures of that wake specifically. Yep, that’s how I structure my Sunday mornings), I would have a reference for how foggy it was.

Because as much as I like watching ships, what I am even more interested in are their wakes. I really like how the otherwise calm surface clearly shows very detailed reflections that are only distorted by the wake. Look for example at the little life guard stand and its reflections — the poles holding up the roof are reflected on at least four different waves, repeating that very distinct part of the structure in different places depending on the surface slope of the wave. Or, to the left of the bottom reflection of that life guard stand, the reflection of the railing that seems to be mirrored. How awesome is that?

But then I also really like interferences of waves as shown below. Little seagull and its wake riding on the remaining wake of the Sweden ferry…

Or little random wave rings radiating out from a rock that is submerged and then resurfaces with each wave reaching it.

And what I find super fascinating in the picture below is how you see the longer waves in the undulations of the dark reflection of the structure of the jetty (careful though, it would never be a straight line since each individual pillar and the shoulder on top of which the actual gangway sits creates a little edge in the reflection), and then the short wavelength waves creating a noise on top.

And then, last but not least, the thing that I love to look at every single time: the waves and their reflections on the sea wall, creating a crisscross pattern.

Now imagine you had been on this walk with me. Would you have seen all the wave stuff, I saw?What are the kinds of things that you would have noticed that I clearly did not (since I did not mention them here)?