Category Archives: Photography

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!

Pancake Day

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Canon 5D, 40 mm, ISO 800, 1/60 sec @ f/5.6

A while back I was caught a wonderful documentary on Sky Arts about Steve Schapiro. Whilst watching I noticed he always (obviously!) had a camera with him and I started wondering why that wasn’t the case with me. I soon realised it was because physically the smallest lens I have is the not insignificant Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8L Macro USM. Sorted! I clearly needed a small lens!

The question then was what focal length. I have a Canon EF f/4L 17-40 mm that is great for landscapes on the full-frame 5D. I thought about a 24 mm but would that be flexible enough for all forms of photography? My lenses are the aforementioned 17-40 mm and a Canon EF 70-200 mm f2.8/L IS USM along with the 100 mm macro. I also have a 2x convertor for the 70-200 zoom so I’m covering most bases. If I were to get a fixed focal length lens I need to know it’s going to be useful in most situations.

The choices seemed to be within the range 24-50 mm. That’s some choice and needed to do some research. I really fancied the wider angle as it would suit my style of photography…

Another consideration this time was the cost of the lens. I hadn’t scrimped on costs before but I couldn’t justify dropping a lot of cash on something I might not enjoy using.

It seemed the sweet spot at the intersection of price, usability, image quality and physical size was the Canon EF 40 mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens so that’s what I’ve gone for. It’s funny how different the 5D looks with such a small lens – almost like a toy camera. I’m looking forward to taking the camera with me more and trying out some new techniques. I’ve got a trip to Istanbul coming up at the end of June and I have decided that this will be the only lens that I take with me.

During the course of my research I was pleased to find Sean Tucker’s website. It’s a great site with some great images and even more amazingly some good tips and knowledge sharing from a professional who takes pride in helping others improve their craft. In his blog, Sean sets himself a challenge to use a series of single focal length lenses. Included were 24, 35 and 50 mm lenses. It was good to read his experiences particularly with the 24 mm as that was my original preferred choice.

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.