Tag Archives: Coast

Becoming Emotionally Attached To A Photograph

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An East Coast Beach With Moon

An East Coast Beach With Moon

Now that I’ve redesigned my website I’ve started to go back through my (digital) photo catalogue to create some new galleries. The image to the right is one of my 300D shots from 2004 (iso 400, f11, 1/320s). This is an image I keep returning to time and again. Each time I try a little change here and a little change there. I try editing in Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop. I try colour and black and white and, in this version, a blue & sepia split tone.

I think on any objective assessment I’m wasting my time with this image. Let’s face it, it’s not that good. It has some interesting features, such as the groyne leading out to sea, a pretty much full moon and the groyne and moon sort of balancing each other in the frame. But, in reality, there’s too much lost space in the middle, the moon is too far into the corner, the beach & sea too close to the bottom, the foreground is too dark (pushed in this version creating artefacts), the focus isn’t sharp and the overall image is flat and grainy. Oh, and I don’t even know where it was taken. It’s somewhere on England’s east coast, probably between Scarborough and Skegness.

So why do I keep going back to it, when in reality I know I’m not going to be able to turn it into a picture I’m proud of. I think it’s because, despite all it’s short comings, I do have an emotional attachment to it. In this case it has nothing to do with the trip I was on or the circumstances at the time. No, in this case it is because it was the first opportunity I had with my first digital SLR to take more than a snap. I saw the moon, saw the lead ins, tried to compose for the scene’s obvious potential and took a few shots. Could it have been done better? Yes, absolutely, although I suspect this was as good as it got for me at the time. And that’s just it, regardless of where I feel my photography is now, I’m proud of this image, warts and all, and I’m sure I’ll keep going back to it!

Early HDR Photos at Holy Island

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This is the first article in a occasional series I’ll be running looking at some of my early attempts at various photographic techniques. In September 2005 Kim & I were at one of our favourite photo locations, England’s north east coast (the bit between north Newcastle and the Scottish border).

The image below (Canon 300D, ISO100, 32mm, 1/6s, f29) is a shot of one of the old fishing boats on Holy Island with Lindisfarne Castle in the background. There are several in this harbour in various states of disrepair. I was quite close to the boat when I took the shot so even at f29 the immediate foreground and background are not in focus. These are aren’t the only technical failings either I’m sure you’ll agree!

Boat on Holy Island - Original

Boat on Holy Island - Original

But, even though it had plenty of technical issues I still quite liked the shot, so I decided to post-process it using an HDR technique, using Photomatix. I’d not set out with this intention so I didn’t have multiple actual exposures to play with so I created -1 and +1 stop virtual images in Lightroom and used these for the HDR image.

Boat on Holy Island - HDR

Boat on Holy Island - HDR

The processing has had a noticeable effect to:

  • deepened the blue (unrealistically) in the sky and bringing out some of the faint cloud structure
  • increase the local contrast to give certain areas more definition, eg on the water and around the flowers
  • increase brightness in the shadow areas of the boat and shaded grass

Looking back now I think I over-processed the image. It suffers from banding and quite serious halo effects. Also, it’s getting to the point of looking quite artificial, almost like painting. At the time though it did leave me impressed with the possibilities that HDR offered and what could be achieved with practise and more attention to detail.

 

First Trip To Kimmeridge Bay

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Kimmeridge Bay is a small bay on the UK’s Dorset coast. This Google Maps link shows the location. Kim and I spent a few hours there on this New Year’s Eve afternoon. As you can see from my iPhone shot on arrival the weather wasn’t being particularly kind to us.

Arrival At Kimmeridge Bay

Arrival At Kimmeridge Bay

So as any keen photographers would do we headed back into Kimmeridge itself and had coffee and cakes! I can recommend the home made cakes at Clavell’s Café and Farm Shop. We then headed back down to the bay to see what we could make of the conditions. By the way, if you go to Kimmeridge during peak season you have to pay a toll to get to the beach car park. At the time of writing it’s £5 per car.

There were a few other people in the bay, but they were mostly fossil hunters (Kimmeridge Bay is on the Jurassic Coast), so we didn’t have any problems finding some quiet spots. The bay itself is also a popular photo destination with plenty of rocks and rocky platforms. It’s also infested with flies, so expect to be dive bombed by them as you walk along the beach! We setup on the western arc of the bay.

The first couple of locations I tried didn’t work for me, so no shots from them. But, I managed to fumble about at one location and drop my Lee hard grad in a rock pool, via a rock. Fortunately it only cracked one of the corners. If it’d been a glass filter (can you still get these?) I doubt I’d have been so fortunate.

The first image is a 480 second/f22 exposure at 24mm. A Lee Big Stopper and a Lee hard grad were also used. There were 3 kite surfers directly in the centre of this frame, but the long exposure hid them well.

Kimmeridge Location 1

Kimmeridge Location 1

The next image is 60 seconds/f8 at 24mm, but with a couple of degrees down sift applied to increase the depth of field. Focusing was done using Canon’s EOS Utility on a netbook that was tethered to my 5D Mk II. Again, a Lee Big Stopper and a Lee hard grad were also used. I’ve also changed the white balance slightly on this one to be a little more realistic.

Kimmeridge Location 2

Kimmeridge Location 2

The next image was taken with the Big Stopper swapped for a 3 stop filter. It’s 6 seconds at f22 on the 24mm to try and get more texture in the water.

Kimmeridge Location 3

Kimmeridge Location 3

The four and final image in this set is a composite of two photos. One was taken focused in the foreground and the other at the end of the rock ridge. They were then image stacked in Photoshop to increase the depth of field. Both images were captured at 180 seconds/f20.

Kimmeridge Location 4

Kimmeridge Location 4