This rain of particles
...that waters the waste with brightness (Little Cosmic Dust Poem, John Haines 1983)
Cap Fréhel, Brittany
...that waters the waste with brightness (Little Cosmic Dust Poem, John Haines 1983)
Cap Fréhel, Brittany
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Cap Fréhel, Brittany
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Mar, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken at Cap Fréhel, a tiny peninsula in Brittany, France, with two lighthouses at the end of it. I was in Brittany, along with a friend who is also a keen photographer, to attend a wedding. We had a few days spare afterwards and planned to visit the lighthouse. As it turned out it was closed but we still had a great day taking photos and swimming at a deserted beach.Time
Surprisingly this was taken at 11am on a bright, sunny day - which can be seen easily in the out-of-camera file, see below for how I achieved the dark background.Lighting
There was plenty of sunlight to pick out the droplets on the spiders web, but the background (a gorse bush) was also brightly lit, meaning there wasn't much contrast to be had. Luckily the green gorse bush was a uniform enough colour that I could bring out the contrast by tweaking the colour balance after B&W conversion.Equipment
I wasn't on a photography trip so I only had my Canon S90 compact (that goes with me everywhere). I love the little thing - full manual controls in a body that's compact enough to slip into a shirt pocket. I took advantage of those controls to open the aperture all the way, blurring the background as much as possible given the constraints of a small sensor. I think I also needed manual focus as the AF kept wanting to focus on the bush in the background. As it was sunny there was no need for a flash or tripod.Inspiration
I've always loved the look of dew on spiders webs and always stop to photograph them when I can, but I have very rarely seen droplets this big on a web. I was very lucky to spot it as it was low down and partially hidden from the path.Editing
I do all my post-processing in Lightroom (unless I want something complex, in which case I grudgingly reach for Photoshop). In this case I cropped fairly extensively as I always like to leave a border round my compositions to give me some wiggle-room later. I then converted to B&W, adjusted exposure, contrast and clarity a bit, then massively dimmed the green in the B&W mix tab to give the dark background.In my camera bag
I used to shoot with a Nikon D300, but have recently switched to a much lighter Panasonic gx7 micro 4/3rds body. I often shoot while hiking so the light weight makes taking my camera on a hike a much more appealing prospect. As for lenses I decided to mainly go for primes when I got my new setup, and it's a decision I'm not regretting one bit. I normally carry a 14mm pancake (28mm equiv.) for wide-angle stuff, a 20mm pancake for street photography and some landscapes (it's the micro 4/3rds equivalent of the "nifty fifty"), and a 60mm macro lens from Olympus that does triple-duty as a macro lens, a (slightly longer than ideal) portrait lens and a medium-telephoto. I want to round that out with a 100-300mm lens in the near future, which should give me pretty good coverage over the entire zoom range, except for ultra-wide, which I rarely feel the need for.Feedback
First of all, always have a camera with you even if you're not on a photography trip. My compact lives in my bag or on my belt, and I wouldn't have captured this at all if it wasn't for that policy. Secondly, keep a good lookout - this web was almost hidden from the path and if I hadn't been keeping my eyes peeled for shots I would almost certainly have walked right past it. Finally practice "seeing in black and white" - as I mentioned, the contrast in this image was terrible, but I knew that I could do something about that after B&W conversion because there was a colour contrast, even if there wasn't any contrast in the lighting. I might not have bothered with the subject at all if I hadn't realised that.
