Days at sea on a cruise ship may be heaven for some, but frustrating for a photographer with nothing to shoot. Yet I quickly realized that expressive images could be found anywhere, even in the middle of an ocean. Gazing out to sea from the stern of the Marco Polo, I noticed that the waves made by ship’s own engines created rhythms and patterns of extraordinary beauty and turmoil. I spent over an hour shooting hundreds of digital images of those waves, trying to find the one instant in time when everything in the picture would coalesce into a marine tapestry of cohesive fury and exquisite beauty. And finally I did. After spending a half hour shooting with the camera held at horizon level, on impulse I tilted the frame, using the wake of the ship as a diagonal organizing force. Fascinated by the moving water cascading both above and below this line, I tried to time my shots to capture the most expressive water patterns both above and below this line. This is the instant in time that worked the best. At the top, streams of white water crackle in the green sea like static energy. At the lower part of the image, multiple mini-wakes rush below a series of feathery trails. A dark blue sea recedes in the distance, still white with froth, but no longer as agitated as the wake itself. This is one of those pictures where the photographer does not control much of what is captured. The movement of the sea, changing instant by instant, will determine the outcome. All I needed to do was to organize the overall structure of the image, and then just keep shooting the moving water until I found, completely by chance, the moment when everything came together.