untitled shoot-243-3
Mar, 2017Views
156
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Awards
Winner in Black and White Lighthouses Photo Challenge
Peer Award
Superb Composition
Outstanding Creativity
Absolute Masterpiece
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Behind The Lens
Location
My wife and I had taken a small New Years Eve vacation to Weymouth and Portland (UK) for the passing of 2015, we had hoped to see fireworks across the Weymouth bay but this failed to materialise and we found ourselves back in our room watching small displays out of the B&B window, feeling a little sorry for ourselves we set of for the Portland Bill lighthouse to see if any shots were to be realised.Time
We arrived at the lighthouse at around 11.00 PM (not a big drinker post a triple heart bypass) and looked for some inspiration . The wind was very heavy as the tail end of Storm Frank rolled through, after about a half hour of the tripod being shaken all over I headed to the edge of the lighthouse for some shelterLighting
I wanted to produce the rays of light whilst also creating a decent exposure of the lighthouse, after some trials I settled on a 13 second exposure at f2.8 at iso 6400, anything longer and I found that the rays tended to blend together as the light went round.Equipment
Canon 6d, Tamron 17-35 2.8-3.5 shot at 17mm f2.8, Manfrotto 055CXPRO3 Tripod with a 324 Pistol grip RC2 release head.Inspiration
I shot around the light house for a while shooting the same old scenes but nothing was really capturing me until I thought about shooting up the edge of the lighthouse, I have done it with some trees in the past. My tripod had two legs over a gate and one near to me part resting on the gate so that I could get the camera body close to the lighthouse wall.Editing
Processing was in Light Room, the main controls being, correction of the white balance before desaturation, Boosting the whites addition of clarityand highlights, increasing the shadows a little. sharpening and noise reduction with a sharpening mask and adjusting the radiusIn my camera bag
I always have my 6d and my two favorite Tamron lenses, the first being the 17-35 f2.8-3.5 which this was shot with and also my Tamron 24-70 f2.8, I have many others that move in and out of the bag but these two always come with me.Feedback
Let your ISO go high and spend some time getting yourself in a good central position it is a shot that requires a good central position. Use a remote trigger not connected to a self timer, it would be very difficult to time when to start the exposure to get a good spread of the light rays working from a self timer release.
