f/14, 1/24, ISO 400, 18mm
f7.1, 1/140, ISO 640, 35mm
Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles.
-Robert Browning, ‘Love among the Ruins’ (1855)
16mm, f22, 1/3, ISO 100
Mostly I go for a naturalistic approach but sometimes it’s fun to play around with black and white, and a little bit of colour. Kimmeridge Bay is on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. It is best known as a ‘honeypot’ location for spectacular sunset and sunrise shots. But what can you do when the weather doesn’t co-operate? Give it up as a bad job or try for something a little more creative? Some of my other images from this shoot are here, here and here.
27mm, f8, three bracketed exposures at 10, 20 and 30 seconds, ISO 400. Circ. polariser, tripod, remote shutter release.
I went out to shoot the sunset but the moon took over.
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a photographer, Jenifer Bunnett, based in Surrey who had found me on the internet and suggested we might go out on photo safaris together. We met up for a coffee and a chat and found we hit it off. Jen is a super photographer whose interests are similar to mine. On Tuesday we had our first adventure together. I have already posted my shots of fungi from the woods around Friday Street in the Surrey Hills. However, our main quarry was this waterfall, something Jenifer had read about but hadn’t yet found. It seemed to be something of a secret, mentioned mysteriously on the internet but without directions. It turned out, to my surprise, that I had been there, several years ago, on a family hike. Surrey isn’t known for its waterfalls, but this one is pretty and tranquil – we had it to ourselves. Although most of the trees around it are laurel, and so evergreen, we did notice a few birches so a return visit in a couple of weeks is very much on the cards.
If you are interested, do visit Jen’s website and/or her Facebook page.
In August we spent a week in Mudeford, Dorset. On the day we arrived it rained without respite. I knew that the next day would be my best bet for a decent sunset; the light is almost always at its best after heavy rain. So I headed down to the harbour edge and scouted around for a composition. At first, I wasn’t sure if I would be in luck but, as the sun started to dip below the horizon, things started to get interesting.
I often find that the best shots happen just after the sun has set. Then it throws its rays up into the atmosphere, catching the undersides of clouds and, if you are lucky, bathing them in pink.
Mudeford is at the mouth of Christchurch Harbour, a natural harbour just on the Dorset side of the Dorset/Hampshire border, with the New Forest National Park and the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site practically on the doorstep. We loved it there and will definitely be back, soon.
There has lately been some interest in seeing my shooting and processing data. All of these shots were taken at 16mm, ISO 100 and f.16 using 2/3 bracketed RAW exposures ranging from 1/8 to 2.5 seconds, with tripod, remote release and circ. polariser. Blended in CS4 using layer masks. Correction of lens distortion also in CS4. Colours straight out of camera.
Of the many photographs I took at La Corbiere, on Jersey, this summer, this is probably my favourite. I can’t begin to convey adequately how it felt to be there listening to the waves and waiting for the light. When the sun peeked through the clouds just before dipping below the horizon, it was glorious.
Another shot of my lighthouse muse, La Corbière on Jersey in the Channel Islands. Better compositions are to be had on the rocks below but high tides coincided with sunset during my recent trip so I had to make do with a higher vantage point. The long exposure time needed for the low light has softened and muted the waves. You will just have to take my word for it that they were crashing onto the rocks below and I would have been inundated had I stayed down there. On the upside, I enjoyed seeing how different the same composition could look at the same time on successive days.
Golden light at La Corbiere, Jersey.
Most photographers I know are always developing their art, changing and adapting to new subjects and new moods. They also tend to change in the way they see images, and this feeds into new images they make. When aesthetic changes are experienced by a large enough number of image-makers, they become fashion. Thus, a couple of years ago, in landscape work, so-called High Dynamic Range, or HDR, images were all the rage. Done subtly, HDR simply means properly exposing an image so you have detail in the shadows and the highlights, something that with few exceptions has always been a minimum standard for landscape work. The trouble with the HDR fashion as it emerged towards the end of the last decade was that the effect was exaggerated until the image came to look surreal. For me, many HDR images started to be about displaying the technique rather than the landscape as it was revealed by the light prevailing when the image was taken. Yet it is easy to see how this happened.
Blue hour, La Corbiere
The power of photoshop, and HDR plug-ins like Photomatix, is seductive. It is so easy to keep on editing, always seeking more impact, way beyond the point when perhaps, in the cold light of the next day, one should have stopped. I have done this myself, egged on by sites like Flickr and 500px where the ‘success’ of an image depends on its being immediately striking rather than any lasting appeal. Of late, however, I find myself seeking a more subdued aesthetic, one that I hope is truer to the moment as I experienced it when I took the image in the first place. These images of my lighthouse muse, La Corbière, are the case in point; simple, minimally-edited captures of brief moments when the light seemed to connect with the landscape in a way that pleased my eye. They are not clever and they will not win any awards but I begin to find myself more satisfied with this sort of image than any other.
Of course, as with any fashion, there eventually has to be a backlash, and the HDR pendulum seems to be swinging back the other way. So, perhaps in my love of the understated I am just another victim of fashion’s vagaries… Has your approach to image-making, or image-appreciation, changed recently? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Focused Moments 