Ha’way the Waves!

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Canon 5D, 28 mm, ISO 100, 247 secs @ f/16

In my efforts to capture a decent long exposure with the Big Stopper during a recent trip to Roker, I was forced closer to the water’s edge for two reasons. First I could only attach the filter to my 17-40 mm lens and secondly in order to ensure there were no distractions, the wide angle lens would only be suitable if I got between said distractions and the water.

I found a great little spot at Roker Harbour where the water came quite close to the pavement so I didn’t even have to get sand on me or my equipment – always a bonus! As I was setting up there were some nice shafts of light coming through the clouds so I stuck on a polariser and 0.1 ND grad and took a few shots. I then added the Big Stopper. I calculated I needed a 128 second exposure but it looked too dark once completed.

The sun was continually breaking through and then being covered by the clouds so I then experimented at 180, 240 and 360 seconds. My initial preference was the 6-minute exposure but after consideration I chose the 4-minute one above. It’s slightly over the time as my fat fingers hadn’t released the shutter properly. I think I’m getting there. Some additional foreground interest would help I think – a couple of decent sized rocks or posts, but I included the water’s edge to compensate for the lack of those.

Roker Pier & Lighthouse

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Canon 5D, 100 mm, ISO 200, 1/3 sec @ f/11

Last week my other half had to travel to Sunderland for a meeting so I thought I’d tag along and we stayed in nearby Roker. I was keen to visit as my friend Paul Mitchell had taken (as usual) a stunning photo of the pier there. I was also hoping for the opportunity to take some more long exposures as it’s a form I really enjoy but one I’m finding difficult to master.

Sunrise was  at 05:01 so fifteen minutes before I was set up but was immediately faced with two problems. First the tide was out and to take a shot that showed the curve of the pier nicely I would need to be quite elevated. Elevation wasn’t a problem thanks to the road that ran along the coast using my normal 17-40 mm lens would mean capturing a whole load of unnecessary foreground and lamp posts. Instead I tried my 100 mm lens which framed the image nicely. The real problem was that I then couldn’t attach any of my filters as I didn’t have a 58 mm adaptor ring.

Annoyingly the image, whilst nice, looks to be an attempted straight copy of Paul’s in terms of framing – something I was anxious to avoid! Photographers tend to develop an annoying habit of just copying what is perceived to be a good shot. I want to neither do, nor be accused of that but I think in this instance the shape of the pier and the plethora of encroaching objects meant there was only one obvious way to frame the shot.

Anyway it’s different enough from Paul’s in that it’s not a long exposure, and the cloud cover meant that a monochrome version looks far better than the colour one. Another conscious decision was to include some spray to further differentiate.

The learning for me here was to consider using a long lens for landscapes – something I’d not done in the past. Accordingly I now have an filter adaptor ring on order!

Boaty McBoatface In Retirement

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Canon 5D, 40 mm, ISO 100, 1/4 sec @ f/22

There’s a little old unnamed yellow boat moored near the oil terminal that looks for all the world that she’s been abandoned and left to the elements. I have decided that she is my Boaty McBoatface.

As the sun lit the little boat up, along with the water around it I liked the banding caused by the foreground shadow from the overhead pier, the lit up mid-ground and the dark background, finally followed by the lighter sky.

Not So High Tide

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Canon 5D, 22 mm, ISO 100, 122 sec @ f/22

Unbelievably it’s getting on for a year since I last spent the afternoon down near the river to photograph the rising water levels as the Mersey approached high tide. Today I had the opportunity to do this again, and since the weather was nice it seemed daft not to. The fact that there’s a fantastic pub pretty much on site has nothing to do with it..! Last time I visited I was making do with a 3-stop ND filter to slow the shutter but this time I was armed with the Big Stopper I had previously coveted. It was also a first chance to use my new low-profile Landscape Polariser, also from LEE.

Unfortunately although I had determined it was high tide, I hadn’t paid enough attention to notice it will be Neaps in a few days so the water level was quite low. The trials and tribulations of being an amateur photographer never end it seems!

New Brighton Lighthouse

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Canon 5D, 17 mm, ISO 100, 0.4 sec @ f/22

I did something I haven’t done for a long time this morning – got up with the intent to take some early morning shots. After doing a bit of research with Tides Planner to determine that it would be low tide at New Brighton at around sunrise – 06:32, and then with The Photographer’s Ephemeris, I decided that the sun (should it play along) would be nicely positioned to take a picture of the lighthouse at New Brighton…

So at 06:00 I arrived at the site and positioned myself, fired off a few test shots and waited. There was an encouraging gap in the clouds through which the sun was scheduled to appear and at around 06:45 it decided to make an appearance, lighting up the lighthouse but unfortunately not the sands. The result was a nice but unnaturally yellow-looking lighthouse, hence the conversion to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2.

Prior to converting I had initially used Color Efex Pro 4 to apply a Midnight filter that I played with slightly. Whilst I like the effect I don’t normally use it but had last night been reading an article featuring Paul Sanders in Light and Landscape Magazine where a couple of his images had a similar feel. Unlike Paul however I had to rely on post-processing to get the effect. After a while I decided the effect was a bit too heavy handed – probably down to my fat fingers – and reverted to straight black and white.