i thought it might be a bit interesting to come out and see if we could take
one of those iconic landscape shots that you find in places like ikea
something to go on the wall and be really enjoyed because imagine how much
more self satisfying it will be if you shot your own ikea style
photograph
got it printed onto a canvas
and you can really sit back and feel proud of yourself
for me something that works really really well
is space a sense of peace and quiet so that's why i thought we come out here
into a nice empty place well
empty apart from that
it's fantastic isnt it, doesnt it look amazing
infact i think janes just done the job for me with the video camera, you can go now
the reason we came down here is that i wanted to see if i could
capture an iconic ikea style picture, to put on my wall
now we're gonna do this for real, now i want to take you through the whole process of
what i'm doing in order to get the shot that i'm hoping to get later on
i might go home completely disappointed because i dont know what the weather's
going to do, the sun might go in it might pour with rain really don't know
what's gonna happen this is absolutely for real
we've come down here in the middle of the day
because i want to do a wrecky
this is not about running around taking loads and loads of pictures
this is about coming to doing the research, i already know roughly the
sort of picture though i want to take
but now i'm gonna find out what i need to do in all that to take it the first
step is to get myself familiar with the subject in the surroundings
so i've got a good idea what to do and i think this evening its going to be around
sunset the sun's going to go down over here out to sea
whether we get a sunset behind it or not i really don't know, but step one
is to have a look around
and see what's going on
so let's do that
let's have a little walk and see what happens
i've just got an ordinary eighteen
to seventy lens
sitting on the camera
im just going to take a few little test shots to see what goes on, and probably going to duplicate the shot
that
you've just been looking at
so i've got some idea
where i want to go with this, i've got a lens cap on, that un heard off
they're usually lying in the bottom of my pocket or in my
bag or something
right have i got my auto focus on, have i got the camera switched on,
you know what im like by now
right im going to use a low-ish iso
just while we're testing im not going to
faf around to much, thats quite sharp, that looks quite nice, thats a nice sort of
open, empty
i really like the black and white on the building, can you see
they've got black-and-white thing going on, i really like that, its nice and sort of simple
thats the sort of thing i want with a nice and
simple picture
i just want to take a look at the same shot
but from further away so im going to come over in this direction
to see what it looks like when shot with a longer lengths
this is somethig you need to do, its experiment, play with things
see how they look, the wide lens often gives
tons of space , you sort of really really feel like
you're alone in the wilderness
a longer lens will kind of close that in a bit, i just want to see
what the feeling is
if i actually shoot that with a wide lens
from here
do you know i really quite like that, i've got it really quite small in the frame, havent i?
yeah thats quite interesting, i wont to go back further
and see if i can get that shot, but withn a slightly longer lens
i wanna push it out to about fifty mil that was eighteen
and see what it looks like fifty mil is a natural looking sort of a
perspective thats how our eyes see the world really
come on, keep up
right what are we doing
i was doing this one day at a wedding, photographing a bride and groom coming
out of the church
and i walked straight into a bin at the other side of the road, caught me behind the knees
and i folded up into it, and couldnt get out
one day i'll do this and walk into somebody
that's looking good
but i wanna go back further still
you'll notice that im shooting from this angle
and its because i dont want to get the town in the background, over there
so
here we go
sorry about that guys
here we go
that's getting better
the fact that im using the slghtly longer lens mean that im not using so many
converging verticals on the light house itself
this is the world record
guiness is waiting over here in the bushes for a man walking backwards with a camera
one day i will bump into somebody here we go
right, fifty mil lens
that's more interesting, i like that
im hoping there wont be people here later on
do you know what
i think i actually prefer the wider angle one
because the wider shot
not only is it a wider angle going that way but its a wider angle going that way
so im actually picking up more sky
and im getting a big sky sort of feel to it
so i might actually go for the wide angle,
now i've already done a bit of reserach and discovered that
when we come back this evening the tide is going to be a bit high
heres the high tide look, its running across here were all this sea weed is
now the tide is going to come up here
so therefore
im going to get wet if i decide to get out close, so
you might have some fun whilst im paddling in icy col water
its one of those things you know, if you want to get the shot, its one of those things your going to have to do
while we're here i am going to have a quick look from the other side, just incase there
something interesting we can do with the town in the background
because in he evening
that all might light up, with the street lights and all the rest of it
i dont know so, its worth doing the research
im going to wander over there, and grab my tripod and see you there tripod not see that
i just noticed the clouds
and whats going on behind the light house, and i think they look amazing
and i just want to see if i can find a way
to do that shot so im in the classic photographer situation
but being in a faf of chasing the picture
actually this is precisely what i wanted to avoid this evening
i don't want to get down here and go wow look at the light and then be running around
like a headless chicken, which is what im doing now
but i do like these clouds up here
so i've just come down, i want to see if i can get a grad feel going on
above it
but im not at all prepared, im not ready
with this sort of stuff you need to find your shot
get yourself in position
and then wait for the shotto come to you ,dont chase the shot otherwise you'll miss
everything.now i am breaking all the rules in the book by
trying to chase the shot
so i lee filter on there, im using a grad because i wanna try and
darken the sky down a bit
to get the most out of those
clouds so what's going on here
focus up
i dont know why i took two shots then
mm, its not bad but i actually missed the moment
i was so busy trying to find the adaptor,
bits and pieces and the correct filter
that i actually missed my shot
just now there was more blue there was more puffiness in the clouds
so thats why im doing my wrecking now, i dont want to miss the moment when it comes later on
while im here im just gonna have a little
play and see
if i can get anything
out of this shot, i just wanted to experiment, i said earlier
i don't want to do a shot with the town in the background but why not, you know
nah, thats a load of nothing really, abort that, i'll put my filter away before it gets all
salty
refills cost lots of money so we dont want to go and mess them up
buts its still interesting to stand here and look and see what it might be at night
with those you know
the shots and the sea front and all the rest of it lit up
now i keep the filter
wrapped in tissue paper
i'm going to try and look after it
make usre its all in good nick, dont want it to get scratches on these things and you dont want to buy another
one if you can avoid it, i had a lee big stopper in here about 2 weeks ago and i
needed it for a shot and i found that i'd broken it
fifty quid filter
thats several weeks trying to get one
i'm just going to leave things here for a minute
go for a little walk this way and see
what it looks like, actually lets go in a bit closer, im sure my kit will be alright
im always leaving things lying around, how i havent had my stuff nicked i
just dont know
but the shot i have definitely got in my head is the sea closer in, the wide angle big
sky sort of a thing
i think im going to be shooting across the water because its going to be wet
so that should prove interesting as well one more go from in here
to see how this works , see now this wont work terribly well,
i like the red stripe on the front of the lighthouse
but i dont particulary like the duenes and the greenary behind it
or the town off in the distance
what have got here
yeah lets go for something like that
oh we've got a bit of light coming out here which might improve it
lets have another go
days like today are so changeable
you never know what the suns going to do from one moment to the next
i dont like all the stuff behind it
if we go back to our first wrecky shot
thats so much quieter isnt it, thats so much nicer
so there we go, i'i'm pretty clear on what i want to do later on
we've just got to hope that the light and weather, everything comes together
so i can do it
*pause*
so we've come back down here to see whats going on, im in a bit of a panic because
best-laid plans we've got here a little later than i wanted
i really like this open space, i dont know if you can see but theres this kind of
slanted rays of light going on
im using a longer lens because i dont want the beach hut to do this, i dont want
the light house doing this, i dont want a
convergence in it
so im just going to take one from here
and see what we got, yeah its interesting
ideally you could use a grad to try and darkern the sky but because of the block of
darkness at the top
and that band of brightness in the middle i cant really use one
if i put a grad on it would darken the top
but i wouldnt be able to put it along the lighthouse because that would darken the
lighthouse too
so this is going to be a case of moving back and forth
also the tide's coming in so that is something we're going to have to work
with
and with the light further over that side im realising that this is more
morning shot than i first thought
so ideally i should be here first thing in the morning at sun rise
i'm not to be able to
so i might do some shooting from the other side coming back this way, even though im not
so keen on this greenary
but there is a way around it which i'll talk about when we get there
all i've done is move a little bit, i've moved about i dunno
fifty feet from over there
to over here
and i'm just changing where the sun is and instead of it being on this side of the light house its now
its on that side of the light house
and there's still some pretty good kind of beans coming on down towards the
ground
and that's what it's all about moving around
i'm chasing after priority because when the sun is setting
aperture priority actually does a really great job of
finding the correct exposure i dont want to think about i want to think about my shoot at
the moment
some people may say thats right, some people may say thats wrong
i adjust the exposure using the exposure ompensation button
so if i look at it and think thats abit bright or a bit dark
i can bring up the histogram
on an image
see that says to me thats its pretty god, and i quite like this image
but if i wanted to brighten it i could very quickly press the button and dial in a little
more exposure
and the camera will deal with it
im sitting it on a tripod because im using and iso two hundred
i want fine grain, nice colours and good saturation
and now it really is going to be a bit of a waiting game
this light is changing all the time
every shot is slightly different there's some very very strong rays
going on over there right now
and i know there going to look great when i see his image bigger
post-production
tweaking the colors in the contrast and just brightening or darkening a little bit
im shooting raw and im going to do my post-production in light room
again thisn is not cheating post productions has always happened when you took your negs
to a professional printer they would burn the sky and it it would dodge
brighter at a bit that's about all im going to do not into hdr thats not what im going to do, i dont
really like the look of hdr images
all i wanna take is a natural looking shot of this incredible structure
in this amazing enviroment
im just going to go for a higher level shot
now, back on the tripod
because the light level is dropping slightly
alnow notice i've got the
lighthouse to the left
the sun coming through the hole in the sky in the cloud
to the right
but i still want lots and lots and lots of space
around the lighthouse, i really want to capture
this kind of
empty lonely warm
lost quiet sort of a
feeling that this place has
im having a look at this side of the lighthouse
to see what happens because there's a red stripe down the front of it
wwhich lots of people have photographed, i've seen it on the internet
i've already said im not that keen on the undergrowth behind
and the town in the distance
also there looks like a big blue
rotating light or something
on the top
the way to minimize that background
is to set your lens as short as possible, im going down to eighteen for this im not
using a super wide
because the wider the lens gets the more conversion you're going to have
some i'm down to eighteen
i just want to see how that looks
i dont like it
it's just kind of messy
we've got bush's coming in on the left and the town in the background
when i flick between the two this image is so much quieter
its more peaceful
you really look at the lighthouse in that black
square on the back
whereas in the second is just something missing its too busy with all that stuff
going on
so i'm not gonna work this side anymore
i'm definitely going to stick behind it looking that way
because when the sun does drop from the clouds theres going to be a sharper
light here, and it might be really interesting but
i dont know, it may not
also i think will be intersting as the sun comes down
just to see because i think that we are goint to see a
stunning sunset tonight
you dont always get the, but tonight could be a goodie
i'm going back the other side