The Giant Pebbles of Uttakleiv
Ice cold water crashing over the famous round stones at Uttakleiv beach. I was hoping for a sunset shot. Instead I got really bad weather. But that's just ...
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Ice cold water crashing over the famous round stones at Uttakleiv beach. I was hoping for a sunset shot. Instead I got really bad weather. But that's just as well for me since that usually results in even stronger images. And bad weather or not - I just had to climb over those slippery round stones to get close to the action. Don't try that yourself, it really is as dangerous as it looks on the picture...
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Feb, 2018Views
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Community Choice Award
Contest Finalist in Social Exposure Photo Contest Vol 15
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Behind The Lens
Location
On Uttakleiv beach, a north-facing beach on Lofoten islands, Norway. The weather can be really bad there, especially in winter.Time
On a cold February afternoon in the middle of winter, right at sunset - which is very early in the day at that time of the year that far north, almost right after sunrise.Lighting
Only available light, of course! You don't travel that far north in the middle of winter for that magical arctic light and then spoil it all with a flash.Equipment
I am a wide-angle junkie! That's why I try to always have the widest possible lens with me.The nice thing about the Sony A7 cameras is, that you can mount (with adapters) almost any lens from any manufacturer. And the widest available rectilinear full frame lens on the market (from any manufacturer) at that time was the Voigtlaender 12mm. So I used this one. Everything mounted on a tripod, of course, for this long exposure.Inspiration
I was hoping for a sunset shot. Instead I got really bad weather. But that's just as well for me since that usually results in even stronger images. And bad weather or not - I just had to climb over those slippery round stones to get close to the action. I wanted to catch the waves crashing on those stones together with the grand landscape and this amazing sky, really transporting the viewer into the scene. For this, I needed wide-angle, the wider the better.Editing
My post-processing workflow was quite involved and all about quality. Starting out with the best possible raw files from my camera, I used DxO to convert the file into another raw format (.dng) using DxO's very good and gentle noise reduction, sharpening and my custom made lense profile for the Voigtländer 12mm on the Sony A7II. Then I opened the .dng in Lightroom and did 95% of the post-processing there, completely nondestructive, everything still in raw. At the latest possible point I finally opened the file in Photoshop as a 16 bit .tif for some final touches (like a slight Orton effect, some filters from Nik and Topaz, etc.). Then I saved it as a 16 bit .tif and added it to my Lightroom library. Never, ever did I convert to jpg. A jpg file has only 8 bit of information-depth as compared to the 14 bit I started out with in raw. That is only a tiny fraction, namely ca. 1.56% (1/64th to be exact), of the information gathered with the camera! Therefore I do not consider jpg as a decent photo format worth having in my library. The only time I touch jpg is when I export something to upload to the web.In my camera bag
For over 30 years I have always used Nikon equipment, in the end the mighty D800 and later a D810, the classic Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens and the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 lens, a Nikon D750 and the Nikon 70-200 f/4. But since about 2 years I have sold all this and changed to Sony mirrorless and never looked back. I now have the Sony A7RII and the Sony A7II as cameras, the Sony-Zeiss 16-35 f/4 and 55 f/1.8 lens, the Sony 28 f/2 and the 85 f 1.8 lenses, and the new ultrawide Voigtlaender 10mm f/5.6 VM (which is even wider than the 12mm used for this shot).Feedback
To get shots like this you gotta get REALLY close (and wet). I don't know why I keep risking my gear (and probably my life) for shots like this. Don't try that yourself, it really is as dangerous as it looks on the picture.
