Wait for it, wait for it...

The receding surf at dusk, Hengistbury Head

On a recent workshop, I had a (small) Eureka moment!

Henri Cartier-Bresson called it "The Decisive Moment" while Charlie Waite describes being in "the presence of some wonderful alignment of events". To me, this particular Eureka moment (a minute or two after the image above was taken) suddenly made perfect sense of these statements and made me realise that some photographers have "it" - whatever "it" might be.

Having led five budding photographers on a very enjoyable coastal workshop, we were spending the last few minutes of daylight capturing some final images. Having spent time through the workshop discussing and shooting lead-in lines and foreground interest, the question came up as to how would I suggest capturing the beach with just the sea and no foreground rocks, groynes or other objects.

With the sun about to set, I was hoping for some reflected colour in the surf at my feet - but the surf looked a little flat. Time for some manipulation - but I'm referring to physical manipulation and not the digital darkroom kind (if you don't know my normal working style, any more than a minute of post processing is deemed a re-shoot required). Some chunky pebbles tossed into the sand provided disturbance to the surf as it turned and drew back out to sea. This seemed to work well and added some streaks and definition to the immediate foreground that would help lift the viewer's gaze up into the image. I was too far away though and this new texture and interest needed to be nearer - time to get wet feet. Heading further into the surf, I pushed the tripod legs firmly into the sand in the hope that my camera wouldn't try a cross channel swim.

So, I had a brooding sky, some interesting surf and a sun about to set any minute. I wanted to exaggerate the brooding sky and lift the light on the surf a little, so slid the 0.6 (2-stop) Neutral Density Graduated filter out and replaced it with my 0.9 (3-stop). I virtually always use mirror lock-up to minimise the vibrations through the camera body during capture. But when you need precise timing, and have waves lapping around the tripod legs, you can afford to turn the lock-up off.

Ok, time to capture the image. Having preached the benefits of aperture f/11 all afternoon, it was time to drop to f/22 to a) lengthen the shutter a little to add movement to the water and b) to make use of the diffraction often found at such a small aperture and hopefully capture a starburst around the setting sun.

Focused, composed and poised for action, all I had to do was wait for a wave to come right in past the limits of my viewfinder, let it turn and start to recede, count to two and hit the shutter. And by the way, this sequence had been perfected during the half dozen frames shot before capturing this image! Finally, the "right" wave came in, I watched it all the way in through the viewfinder, felt my ankles get wet, waited for the wave to turn and start to recede, one...two...click. Job done!

Now back to the Eureka moment. Having talked about what I was doing, and captured a pleasing image, it was time for my guests to do the same. Straight away, the difference in our positions was noticed; I was at the water's edge (if not ankle-deep at times) while my guests were a few yards back on dry sand. Having advanced to the water's edge and composed the view, it was then time to capture the image. Having talked through the capture process, I noticed the eagerness of my photographers to press the shutter and get a shot - too early, the wave was feet away from the bottom of the frame and no blur or lead-ins.

Next wave: "wait for it to turn and start to recede before shooting". Here comes the wave close to the tripod... click. Too early again and static water captured at our feet.

Third wave: "ok, wait for me to say when".

"Wait..."

"Wait..."

...click.

Too early again. Better, but still no dynamic water.

This is when my Eureka hit me. We can all have top quality cameras and lenses, and lets face it, there aren't many bad cameras out there these days. We can all learn the capture process and understand aperture settings and their effect on sharpness, light captured and the relation to shutter speed and ISO. I could go on, but the vital element we don't seem to all be able to grasp, is "it".

At the start of this post I wasn't 100% sure what "it" was. Having typed away for a while, I can only think that "it" is timing. My guests captured some decent images, and I'm pretty pleased with mine and the only real difference was I waited for the "right" moment before tripping the shutter.

I'm never going to rival Henri's street photography or Charlie's landscapes, but that one...two...click is putting me on the right tracks.

Exposure information: 0.6 sec at f/22, ISO100

Filters used: 0.9 Neutral Density Grad filter.

Post processing: RAW file histogram tweaked slightly in Lightroom, exported as TIFF and inspected at 100% for filter spots (sea spray etc.)

Prints of my images are available from my website.

All images are protected by Copyright laws for Andrew Stevens Photography 2014.

Birthday treat

Durdle Door one cold and grey winter’s morning

I often venture out for sunrise on my birthday for pleasure, with no real “need” to work a scene or a feeling of pressure to make a series of images. It’s usually more about last minute decisions and non-researched gut feeling outings. A sunrise outing also means I have the rest of the day to spend with my family, eat cake, open presents, get spoilt rotten etc. It’s a hard life but…

This image was made on my birthday which is mid-January. This means the sun rises in a fairly southerly direction. I have seen some images of the mid-winter sun rising through the arch of Durdle Door, and fancied following the lead of others for a change – time for a honey pot location!

I arrived at Durdle Door about two hours before sunrise. During the winter months, the caravan park at Durdle is usually closed with a big, locked metal gate, meaning a bit of a hike is required before you even start descending down to the beach.

Walking down to the Door in pitch black is quite an experience, although not one for the faint hearted when you think you’re heading towards a rather high cliff, with crumbling edges, that only has one steep and narrow path down to the beach. Thankfully, my head light and torch were lighting the way for me very nicely. It’s quite something though to stop and pause, switch off all lights and just listen to the tide sweeping in and out on the pebbles below you.

The sky to my left was starting to turn from its current obsidian black, so it was time to head down the steps to the beach. I really must count them one day, but I can safely use the word “lots” to describe them. Once on the beach, I wandered around a bit until I had a clear view through the arch in the general direction that the sun would rise from.

Being down below such high cliffs, my iPhone struggled for signal of any kind, but The Photographer’s Ephemeris app finally loaded and confirmed where the sun would rise and that I was in the right-ish place. Time to get set up!

For a change, I hadn’t studied the weather forecast to any great extent; just enough to know it wasn’t going to rain on me. I can only assume it had looked a fairly promising sunrise as a few other bleary-eyed photographers started to arrive with camera bags slung over their shoulders.

Two of them having arrived together, obviously didn’t like the prospect of “sharing” a location, and immediately headed back up off the beach without even saying hello or taking camera bags off their backs. Odd! So, sat waiting, all set up, all I needed was a lovely sunrise and a starburst around the edge of the arch. What I didn’t need was for the photographer who’d stayed to let his dog off the lead and fill my lovely clean foreground with doggy footprints! Doh!!

From my new footprint-free position a few yards down the beach, I didn’t have an ideal angle through the Door, so I was mentally going through options while trying to resist the urge to throw the dog’s stick 3 1/2 miles in the other direction to keep it off my foreground. But, we can’t blame the dogs and can only mutter under our breaths about the owners.

My new position gave me the more classic view of the Door that you often see, and I had contingency angles lined up should the sunrise be dramatic and doggy footprints suddenly less of a concern.

By this time, the sky to my left had started to colour up – all very blood red and brooding; I could feel my pulse quickening as I watched the light show develop. However, what slowed my pulse was a quick end to the light show before it had even got anywhere near the Door let alone be a starburst through the arch. I had some great stormy clouds, but they were monochrome and the sky was now completely devoid of any colour.

Ok, time for Mono then! I quickly switched my camera to Mono mode and tried a few of the digital B&W filters just to visualise the resulting image – I quite liked what I saw, so added a 0.6 ND Grad filter and liked what I saw even more. I always shoot in RAW to capture the maximum amount of image data, but using the camera functions to shoot a small jpg alongside the RAW allows me to experiment with B&W, even though I’m actually shooting in colour and will convert later in silver Efex Pro. The sun was hiding behind the clouds so I could have probably used a weaker 0.3 ND instead, but I wanted to use a stronger Grad filter so it would lift the detail on the Door, and darken the clouds a bit more.

I usually use Mirror Lock Up in conjunction with a 2 second shutter release delay to minimise camera shake during the exposure. Leaving Mirror Lock Up on, I disabled the timer delay so I could trip the shutter just when I wanted to – I was hoping to capture blurred waves running back out off the beach. f/11 didn’t give me quite long enough shutter speed to blur the water, so I dropped to f/16. This gave me 0.6 seconds, which seemed about right.

Now it was just a question of lining the clouds up. I knew I was going to have a bit expanse of grey cloud in the top right corner, and wanted to use this space a bit more without detracting from the Door and foreground surf. I spotted the brighter sliver you can see in the image, and thought it could be just the thing. It was above the Door when I first spotted it, and waiting for it to drift across the sky seemed to take an eternity. When it finally moved into place, it turned into a subtle lead-in line from the potentially boring corner back to the main point of interest, the Door. Perfect!

As the waves came in I pressed the shutter to lock up the mirror, then just as the wave started to recede I tripped the cable release again to start the exposure and capture the drawback. After a few attempts, I think I got the shot – nothing like I had intended to capture, but I rather like it.

Exposure info: 0.6 seconds @ f/16, ISO100 with 0.6 ND Grad filter.

Processing info: RAW imported into Lightroom and minor exposure tweaks made. B&W conversion using Silver Efex Pro.

Prints of my images are available from my website.

All images protected by copyright laws for Andrew Stevens Photography 2013.

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Faith - and persistence!!

Rocks and La Rocco, St Ouen’s, Jersey

My wife hails from Jersey, in the Channel Islands, so we make regular trips there to catch up with family and friends. It also gives me a pretty good excuse, if I ever needed one, to take my camera and capture some of the stunning scenery on the island.

La Rocco is a defensive tower from the Napoleonic era, and situated a half mile off St Ouen’s beach on the western end of the island. I’ve been to St Ouen’s on many occasions, but never yet managed a photographic outing through the combination of wrong tides, strong wind or just generally bad luck – plus La Corbiere lighthouse is a short distance from here, and usually draws me (as you will see from my other Jersey images!).

Some time ago, a well-known pro landscape photographer told me you know when you’re a true landscaper when you obsess over four weather forecasts on an hourly basis. Well, on this particular day I was definitely a true landscaper! We had been in Jersey for a week and only had a couple of days left, and I hadn’t managed to make any images yet – I hadn’t even taken my camera out of its bag yet! Looking at the forecasts again, they suggested either light rain, heavy rain or a mix of light and heavy rain – with a chance of sunshine around 8pm. Now, for a relatively small island like Jersey, that’s quite some variance! However, Jersey airport was one of the forecast options, and was the one suggesting sunshine around 8pm. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jersey’s geography, St Ouen’s is near the airport, and if you take off heading West, you’ll fly right over the beach and La Rocco tower. Airports like to have accurate forecasts for operational and safety reasons, so I was beginning to feel hopeful for a photographic opportunity. I’m quite partial to a passing storm front as they often give amazing light, and it looked like I might have one tonight.

Despite the heavy rain and thunderstorms near St Helier, I packed my bag and jumped in the car to head off – I think my family thought I was mad! On arriving at St Ouen’s, I was beginning to doubt myself too!! The rain was even heavier, with a fairly brisk wind whipping in off the sea!!! Oh well, time to make the trip a little useful, so I decided to scout views, angles etc for a future trip, with hopefully better weather. After driving up and down 5 Mile Road (which is oddly 3 1/2 miles long), and checking out various chunky granite slipways on to the beach, I had narrowed it down to two potential shooting locations. The local authorities are currently renovating La Rocco, so a third possibility would be added to the list once the work is finished, and the scaffolding on the northern wall removed!

It was still raining quite hard, so I left the slipway at Le Braye and headed south, considering heading home – but I had faith in the airport and their forecast, so I wasn’t driving very fast. I think the photography God heard my prayers, as just as I neared my preferred shooting location, a ball of light appeared between the clouds – at 8.05pm. They were late, but it looked like they might just be right after all.

Diverting to the nearest car park, I pulled in, wound down the window, and turned off the engine. The weather was definitely doing something interesting, but was still raining quite hard. Oh well, I had a waterproof jacket on, and my camera bag has a waterproof covering, so I locked up the car and headed across the road to the beach.

Heading down on to the sand via the impressive sea wall (think German WWII fortifications), I suddenly felt very alone. The wind was blowing, the rain was falling, and I appeared to be the only person on the many square miles of beach. But, the light was improving and the rain easing – time to find some foreground interest! Just off to my right was some lovely chunks of Jersey granite, nicely leading down into a series of rock pools – looks like I had found my foreground.

Having traveled light on this trip, I hadn’t taken my Manfrotto carbon fibre tripod, and was about to initiate the 12″ tall Hama tripod I had bought earlier that week. I usually take my Manf, but just didn’t have the space or weight allowance this time.

After about 15 minutes of standing in the rain, it finally stopped, so, I set up my camera with the usual hot shoe spirit level, cable release, filter holder and fixed it firmly to my mini-tripod. Now where exactly to shoot from…

I could see several options that looked appealing. I wanted to show La Rocco tower in isolation – after all, it stands a half mile off-shore. As is usual, my best option looked like it would be from a small rock right in the middle of the biggest rock pool – they’re never near the edges! So, I checked the sky/land exposure difference and slipped the 0.9 ND Grad into place. I also wanted to control the reflections in the pool, so added my circular polariser – I really didn’t want to be hunting for filters while balancing on an angled rock above water!

After a rather circuitous route, I ended up on my rock – and made an image. It looked great; clearing storm, brooding sky, rocks, reflections etc, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind, and the storm was still clearing… Another rock to the right could be the answer – more hopping, jumping and wobbling later and I had the even better view that you see here. Now all I needed to do was compose and expose before the rain I could see falling to my right reached me. I was looking to use the reflections off the water, so my mini-tripod proved perfect. I was still very nervous as it’s definitely not as sturdy as my Manfrotto, but it was going to give me the view I wanted in a shake-free way,

I just couldn’t believe the transformation happening in front of me – the wind dropped, the clouds cleared, colours changed. I quickly adjusted the polariser to get the reflection effect I wanted, checked focus/aperture/ISO/Grad position and tripped the shutter. Voila, I was a very happy photographer.

Rain was now getting quite close again, so I made my way back to sand, and started to head for the car park. All in all, the rain had stopped for less than 10 minutes, but I had captured possibly my favourite image of Jersey so far. I came away with two images I am very pleased with, and when I got back to my family, they couldn’t believe what I had captured as it was still raining heavily in St Helier, just a few miles from this view. If you’d like to see the brooding image I captured just before this one, take a look at my gallery pages.

Sometimes you’ve just got to have faith, and persistence!

Exposure info: 1/4sec at f/11, ISO100, 0.9 ND Grad + Circular Polariser

Prints of all my images are available from my website.

Sunrise, best time of the day!

For the last eighteen months or so, I have been heavily involved in a major project for a company, so it's been particularly pleasing to finally get out with my camera for some personal work. With a series of Landscape Photography Workshops kicking off this month, it was time to head out and double check potential venues. The last thing I need is to arrive at a venue, and find workmen rebuilding my foreground interest or blotting out the planned views!

I was hoping to carry out these recce's with some photography buddies as I'd not seen them for ages, but they were unable to make it through one thing and another, which left me on my own for this outing. It's a shame I was all alone, but it really did strike home to me why I prefer sunrises over shooting at any other time of day!!

Arriving at my parking space over an hour before sunrise, I quickly changed into my welly boots, pulled on my woolly hat and strapped my tripod on to my backpack - and was very glad I'd decided on full winter gear as it was -3 degreesC despite being in British Summertime!

As my intended shoot venue features Sites Of Special Scientific Interest, the approach road is closed to traffic during nighttime hours to dissuade party goers and protect the wildlife. While this adds a mile or so to my walk, this gives extra time to take in the lovely clean atmosphere of pre-dawn times, and take a good look at the slowly brightening sky. Having checked my usual handful of weather forecasts the day before, I was expecting / hoping for a weather front to be passing over around sunrise. Despite the chances of getting rained on, passing weather fronts can give some very dramatic light. As I walked towards the beach, I could see clear skies above the peninsula I was heading for, irregular but heavy looking clouds above my head - but a bank of cloud on the horizon. As the sun was due to rise right through this distant bank, this could well and truly scupper any decent light as it would be completely blocked.

Thankfully, as I arrived at the beach, the horizon was clearing, so my chances of a decent sunrise had increased significantly. Now, the question I get asked the most as a photographer popped into my head; why are most of my images sunrises and not sunsets? It's days like this! Beautiful clean air, gently lapping waves, crisp clean sand and nobody around to get in shot or need excluding from a shot. It really is something special to be stood in such a beautiful location, knowing only you will see what transpires.

I quickly set myself up mounting the camera on my tripod and fitted filter holder, cable release etc., and got ready for the sun to creep above the horizon. Just as it rose, I was rewarded with a few minutes of bright pinks and reds and made some images. However, while I captured some pleasing colours reflected in low surf, what really caught my attention was the gloriously warm light creeping up the beach to the distant beach huts. Having already checked out possibilities while waiting for the sun, I knew just where to head for, so decamped to the dunes.

The light hitting the huts was strong and warm, so all I had to do was arrange my composition. Having found this low dune earlier, I used the grass to give foreground interest, define the location and act as a sense of scale for the distant huts. To exaggerate the lovely light more, and really highlight the huts / beach / grass, I opted for a 0.6 Neutral Density filter. This helped to darken the sky further, and make the beach and huts come alive with colour. I also used my Circular Polariser to saturate colours a little and control the bright reflections coming off the windows.

Exposure info: 1/4sec at f/11, ISO100.

Prints of this image are available from my website.