End Of The Pier Show
The end of the pier at Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. This very elegant pier was opened in 1895, allowing pleasure boats to moor and replacing an ear...
Read more
The end of the pier at Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. This very elegant pier was opened in 1895, allowing pleasure boats to moor and replacing an earlier landing stage which was wheeled in and out of the sea. Today boats still take on passengers here, including the PS "Waverley", the last of the paddle steamers. In recent years restoration of the Pavilion has been completed. In 2014 it was voted Pier of the Year by the National Piers Society.
Read less
Read less
Jan, 2016Views
1274
Likes
Awards
Action Award
Chatter Award
Zenith Award
Member Selection Award
Spring Selection Award
Superb Composition
Absolute Masterpiece
Top Choice
Outstanding Creativity
Peer Award
Superior Skill
Magnificent Capture
Love it
Top Ranks
Top 30 rankTop 20 rank week 1
Top 30 rankTop 30 rank week 2Top 30 rank week 1
Categories
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Discover more photos See all
Behind The Lens
Location
I captured this image on the pier at Penarth, a seaside resort on the coast of the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales - not far from Cardiff.Time
It was the last of a series of stormy days at the beginning of June and the sun was starting to show through, giving interesting lighting conditions. Unusually for me I shot this around the middle of the day. I decided that the positioning of the seats, kiosk and lamp standard just asked to be finalised as a symmetrical picture!Lighting
The stormy but bright sky, the banks of cloud and the sunlight made exposure quite challenging so to balance the shot I took three bracketed exposures and processed the image as HDR.Equipment
This was shot on a Nikon D7000 using an 18-200mm lens set at 38mm to get the symmetrical crop. I didn't have a tripod with me so the camera was handheld.Inspiration
I wanted to capture a shot which shows the clean lines and symmetry of the pier. The banks of cloud were clearly just asking to be pictured and were forming a superb background!Editing
It was shot in RAW so the initial processing, as with all my images, was in Lightroom 5. However, as I was producing HDR, I just saved the three exposures as TIFFs and then processed them using the stand-alone HDR program Machinery. From here final adjustments were made in Photoshop CS5 including slight emphasis of the clouds using the adaptive exposure tool in Topaz Adjust.In my camera bag
What I have in my bag depends on what I'm shooting and where I am - ie what weight do I want to lug around! Having said that I normally carry two camera bodies, a Nikon D7100 and a D7000. I mainly use a Nikon 18-200mm lens and a Sigma 10-20mm 3.5. More recently I tend to carry a Nikon 40mm macro as well as it's a beautifully sharp prime lens with the added bonus of 1:1 macro! When I'm landscape shooting I don't normally carry a flashgun and when weight is an issue I tend not to use a tripod.Feedback
Look for symmetry whether in buildings, structures or nature. If necessary shoot with that final symmetrical crop in mind. In challenging lighting situations or when wanting to emphasise shape or structure, take at least three bracketed shots and merge them using a HDR program - Photoshop's camera RAW is OK but for greater detail and depth of exposure, dedicated programs such as Machinery or Photomatix are, I think, better (depends how frequently you want to produce HDR pictures!).
