carlheyerdahl

Plum Island

Canon EOS 7D

settings

Aperture f/16.0 ISO 100 Shutter 90/1

upload_date

Sep, 2013

Views

120

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Awards

Staff Winter Selection 2015

Cool Capture

Superb Composition

Absolute Masterpiece

Outstanding Creativity

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Exceptional Contrast

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Behind The Lens

Location

This photo was taken in Plum Island in Massachusetts, on the beach right after the the entry road.

Time

This was a fun image to shoot, I had recently bought a new ND 3.0 filter which equates to a 10 stop light reduction, crazy! This means I was able to take this photo during the middle of the day and still achieve a 1 minute and 30 second exposure.

Lighting

Doing such long exposures during the middle of the day often yields this "other worldly" quality of light that can be hard to place. Because this type of photography is typically done during sunset or the early morning, the brightness and directionality of the light in this image is a bit more mysterious.

Equipment

This was shot using the Canon 7D, EF 24-105 f/4 IS USM L series lens, and a B+W 3.0 ND filter, as well as a Manfrotto tripod.

Inspiration

I've always loved long exposure photography of water and clouds especially and was inspired by the work of Vassilis Tangoulis, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Our lives move at such a fast pace these days and I wanted to explore capturing a very long exposure to slow down for a minute and reflect on the beauty in front of me.

Editing

This was pretty simple for post processing. I use Adobe Lightroom for the majority of my color corrections and processing, and this one only required some minor contrast and exposure adjustments as well as the b&w conversion. I also used a gradient exposure filter in Lightroom to pull a little more detail out the sky.

In my camera bag

Right now I am rocking the Canon 7D, and a 5D Mark lll as my bodies, and the EF 24-105 f/4 IS L, the 70-200 f/4 L, the Sigma 35 f/1.4 Art, the Sigma 50 f/1.4 Art and the Canon EF 85 f/1.8 USM lens. I am primarily a wedding and portrait photographer so this gear reflects that, but I love doing little side projects like this image, and so I have the crazy specialized ND filter and an intervalometer for stuff like that. I also use a mixture of canon and yonungo speed lights and a few pocket wizard x's to trigger when needed.

Feedback

To achieve this type of slow seascape, a beach with a rocky jetty or breakwater is good, or something more interesting like a lighthouse or shipwreck. You want something that won't move while the water moves around it. You can take a long exposure of just water, but I find having something solid can really help make the composition more interesting. Its also helpful to have the water be a little choppier to give it a little more motion. If you don't have an ND filter, or one that doesn't cut out as much light, aim for before sunrise or after sunset, as you can get a longer shutter speed without the aid of additional filters.

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carlheyerdahl

carlheyerdahl

Plum Island

Behind The Lens

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