Bluesman1986

St Mary's Island

NIKON D800

settings

Aperture f/16.0 ISO 100 Shutter 30/1

upload_date

Nov, 2014

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201

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+14

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A beautifully atmospheric shot. Lovely.

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Same photographer See all Behind The Lens

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Behind The Lens

Location

This Photo was taken of St Mary's Lighthouse in Whitley Bay, This is location is one of the many iconic spots along a superb stretch of coastline leading up the north east of England.

Time

This was taken just after Sunrise, was waiting for the right time, i was waiting for the tide to be far enough out so i could go a good distance onto the rocks, i wanted to break the rules of composition and have a central subject with a nice balance of water and rocks.

Lighting

The sky was full of clouds with some nice breaks in between, i wanted some highlights in my image but with the cloud moving quite fast this was the perfect opportunity to create a long exposure so the clouds would soften and the water would give me that atmospheric misty look.

Equipment

This was shot on a Nikon D800 with a Tamron 24 - 70 F2.8, i had this stacked on a manfrotto 190XPROB tripod, i used the lee filters system on the front of my lens and placed an ND0.6 soft Grad filter on the front to darken down the sky, i also used the lee big stopper to give me a longer exposure.

Inspiration

St Mary's Lighthouse is a very popular spot in the north east, i wanted something different but i wanted the lighthouse as my main subject, The rock formations are great on this particular side and plenty of detail can be drawn out in post processing, still to this day (2 years on) this is my favorite image, this takes pride of place on my office wall at home in a large print.

Editing

I shoot in a RAW format so processing is a must, the images begins so flat, think of this as a negative back in the day if you like. I started this image by bringing down the highlights in Adobe Lightroom, in camera I always over expose ever so slightly to get more detail in my shadows, after bringing down the highlights i boosted the shadows slightly, this allowed me to recover some detailin the darker areas of the image. I then moved on to lens correction to straighten out any distortion that was present caused by shooting at a wider angle, I also corrected the white balance to tell Lightroom what was white in my photo. After basic exposure adjustments i imported my image into Photoshop, with adjustments made in Lightroom and i continued my workflow from there. In Photoshop i duplicated my background so i could start on a new later and on the new layer started removing any unwanted artefacts using the spot healing brush tool (a bird flying past maybe, a sensor spot, you get the idea). I then created a new layer and added some clarity using a plugin i like to use called "Topaz Clarity" using in house pre-set i chose whichever pre-set was relevant to my scene and made minor adjustments before applying the changes, once the plugin was applied i pulled back the opacity ever so slightly, too much clarity can look pretty bad and i think a lot of photographers including myself have been there, the opacity slider will allow you to reduce the effect on your current later, if you go too far and reduce the effect too much the layer will become transparent. the clarity added provided some nice mid tone contrast to give the image some punch, I then emphasized that in my next step by using the dodge and burn tool, this is a great tool to make your highlights brighter and you shadows darker giving you the ability to control where you want the contrast. Once I was happy with the tone of the image and the contrast I used the unsharp mask tool on a new later to sharpen the image, after doing so I flatten the layers before saving this back into lightroom, before exporting my image I checked for any clipping on the shadows and highlights and adjusted the blacks and white as needed before exporting the JPG to Network Attached Storage for safe keeping.

In my camera bag

I carry a Nikon D800 body, This is know as a full frame camera, I have a Sony A7 Full frame mirror-less, for lenses when doing landscape i like to carry my Tamron 24 - 70 F2.8, My Sigma 50mm F1.4 and my Sony 24 - 70, I tend not to shoot any wider then 24 mm when shooting landscape, this is just a preference of mine as many popular photographers use 16/17mm at times. I also carry Lee Filters to balance my exposure, a few cloths, these are a must when shooting on the coast, a rocket for blowing the dust of my lenses and sensor, some spare batteries, memory cards and a remote. i also have my tripod strapped to the side.

Feedback

Well to capture something like this you have to be down nice and low, think of the lighthouse as my subject but i need something to carry the eye to the lighthouse and standing up straight won't give me the same effect, being low will give you a lot in your foreground if you are shooting a scene like this, this gives a great sense of distance and perspective. If you are going to turn this water into mist you need to shoot a long exposure, shooting at 1s will give you different results to shooting at 1/125s. i shot this image at 30s, this means for those 30 seconds the shutter remained open, recording the image to the medium if you will, any movement of the camera during this time will give you a blurry image so it’s important to make sure your tripod remains still. small things i do help my camera remain still, i switch of any image stabilization the lens has, the motor moving inside will give you a blurry image on a tripod but is great to counteract movement if you are shooting hand held. i have a mirror lock up function which allows me to lock the mirror up before taking a shot (to prevent movement), i also use a remote to, think how this might look if you hold your finger on the shutter button, if you don't have a remote you can use your self timer. we all know 30 seconds isn't possible in daylight, this is where the big stopper comes in, basically a piece of glass in front of my lens reducing my exposure by 10 stops, known as the 10 stop filter, many company's make these in all different shapes and sizes. It’s important when using one of these to prevent light from leaking into the camera, cover your viewfinder, this will prevent the light from entering the camera body, bouncing around inside and giving you a rather unpleasant stripe over your beautiful image. Let’s not forget about focus and aperture, these are fundamentals of photography and control how we manipulate the ambient light. In this shot I focused a third of the way into the image, without going into detail this gave me focus throughout my whole image. I used a small aperture “F16” this extends the focal plane allowing me to have this front to back sharpness and preventing the focus from falling off before it reaches the lighthouse, that’s not to say you can’t shoot this at 2.8, it depends what you are looking for. The most important part of this is to enjoy it. Go out and have fun with it, practice, experiment, see what happens if you shoot this at F2.8 then F16, see what happens to the water when you shoot at 1/125s.

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Bluesman1986

Bluesman1986

St Mary's Island

Behind The Lens

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