St Monans drama
Long exposure at St Monans on the Fife coast, a large storm is heading in towards the small fishing village.
Long exposure at St Monans on the Fife coast, a large storm is heading in towards the small fishing village.
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Jul, 2016Views
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Awards
Action Award
Contest Finalist in Creative Landscapes Photo Contest vol2
Contest Finalist in Black And White Compositions Photo Contest vol3
Honorable Mention in Black And White Landscapes Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Black And White Landscapes Photo Contest
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Peer Award
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Absolute Masterpiece
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Oceanbluephotography
December 25, 2018
Did you enter this photo to my escape? If not you should this is beautiful!!
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
Perched on the rather narrow harbour wall at St Monans harbour, Fife, Scotland, UKTime
Shot 5pm in the evening, there hads been on and off heavy rain for a few hours, approaching the location it was dry again but I could see I had a pretty small window to get anything as yet another sea storm was coming towards the harbour, I had around 15-20 minutes in the end before it hit, allowed to get a few images including this one, the aproaching storm making the scene all the more dramatic with the long exposure dragging out the clouds. this turned out to be the only day on my 4 day trip that I could shoot this location due to the weather and tides combining so I was made up to come away with some images of it at last, this time the storms working in my favour instead of against me.Lighting
Despite the heavy cloud cover there was still some great side light picking out the detail in the pier, allowing some really nice contrast against the dark sky and still picking out nice detail in the Lothian Coastline behind.Equipment
This was shot on a Nikon D750, Nikon 16-35mm f/4, Manfrotto 055 Carbon Tripod with geared head, LEE Landscape polarizer, B&W 10 Stop filter combined with a 3 stop LEE ND hard grad filter. Due to the strong wind I tied the tripod down with a bungee cord with my camera bag hung off it for extra stability as the ledge you need to perch on here is quite narrow so you don't want to be fallling off and knocking your gear over into the sea.Inspiration
I love shooting coastal scenes, often with longer exposures to create surreal dramatic images, be it colour or black and white. This was one location that has real potential for creativity, the storms while anoying with the rain they bring, are also highly photogenic if you can keep dry, and provide the power to transform an image into something special if shot correctly, I wanted to isolate the pier with a long exposure and the added bonus of the sea storm approaching was a welcome addition to the exposure..Editing
The filter set up had got me the right exposure so no photo merging was needing, just a conversion to mono, local adjustments to contrast using curves layers, and a vignette, after spending quite a long time cloning out sensor dust spots which really do show a lot on longer exposures at smaller apertures, it's important to pay real attention to detail with this as they can potentially ruin a good image.In my camera bag
Camera wise my Nikon D750, usually my 14-24 f/2.8, 16-35 f/4 , 24-120 f/4, and 70-200 f/4. Filter pouch with various filters inc 3,6, and 10 stop ND's, 2-3 grad filters and always my 105mm Polarizer. Other items I always carry, cable release, lens cloths (really important if shooting near the sea), black electrical tape (so useful for a thousand things!) and a small peice of cut credit card to slide over my eyepiece when taking long exposures (very quick to use and doesn't matter if you lose it, just cut another one...), and the most important thing, spare batteries, usually about 5.Feedback
Try and think beforehand what type of image you want, if you can visit before taking the image so you know where to go, and where to set up so you aren't rushing and wasting time looking around on the day, if you are looking to capture long exposures always remember to blank off your eyepiece during the image as light leaks can ruin the final image, also don't get too hung up on exposure guides as 10 stop filters can vary in strength from batch to batch, Also always rely solely on your histogram, and not the picture on the preview screen which is just a jpeg representation, the histogram will tell you exactly how far you can push your exposure being blowing the highlights - if you have room left to the right hand side push the exposure till you haven't, brightening an under exposed image will always add noise, darkening a marginaly shot over image will add no noise, but always try to get it right within the histogram.
