Sometimes as a photographer, you're limited with the amount of days that you can go out
and when you do go out the weather's not that good well today as you can see in the background
it's completely overcast i'm going to try and get some good photographs regardless of the weather
today i'm on the west coast of wales it's a stormy summer's day
i've got a few ideas i'm gonna try not to get wet from the rain
and also from the spray from the waves and a big swell is coming in right now don't don't
it's going to be another one of those days where i'm constantly cleaning the lens
but it's a fun day to shoot and that sea is quite lively i've got this green and white tower at the
end of this pier i'm going to put that bang in the middle i've got all these converging lines
on the pier pointing to that now the only thing i don't like about this concrete pier is
the top of it is actually off a little bit so it's leaning to one side obviously they do this so all
of the water that sprays on the top runs off but it just messes up the composition a little bit now
my settings are iso 100 f 5.6 1 100 of a second if i close the aperture down to say f 13 f 11 it's
1 1 25th of a second so i am going to have to use some kind of nd it's quite dark and we've got some
moody clouds moving through so hopefully with enough nd they'll really blur out so that's the
plan anyway whether or not i'll get one is another thing and there's a big wave coming don't ah
that was a big one right i'm gonna get this one really quickly before that happens again
i'm using a six stop filter this is a magnetic one so it's easy to use and quick to use
it's also a polarizer as well so it's like a two in one filter but f11 at iso
100 i get a four second exposure i'm gonna stick it on the self timer of two seconds
and i'm gonna stand here to stop the wind from buffeting the camera at all or to try and stop
it i'll focus on the marker and then take the shot now four seconds i don't think it's going
to be long enough to blur the clouds out too much so the clouds are going to seem pretty static
now this is what i call my warm-up shot it's the first of the day
there are a few distractions and i know i can do a lot better
if you've only got something like a six stop filter all you do is take your iso as low as
possible so i can go iso 50 and then aperture up to f16 something like that that'll then give me a
15 second exposure i've just noticed the markers not quite in the middle now one really good thing
with using a polarizing filter in this instance is that the water that's sprayed up onto the top
of the pier it's very shiny so if you don't have a polarizer the light will reflect off that i've
just turned the polarizer and that's got rid of that shine making the top of this pier really
dark that's basically what i want to do i want to make this pier stand out from the water around it
so when i'm shooting long exposures when is this windy what i like to do
is press the shutter button and hold the camera down so i'm pinning it to the ground so i'm trying
to stop any kind of movement but your hands need to be quite steady sometimes you've just got to
get lucky and get a break in the gusts so what i tend to do is just take a load of shots when
it is like this then just keep checking back until i get a good one now i was hoping to do some much
longer exposures but that wind is really picking up now so probably not the best time to be doing
photography like this but i do like a bit of a challenge if it is really windy and you can only
do say 10 to 15 second exposures before you get movement in the camera you could take a series
of shots with exactly the same framing and then blend them together afterwards this will give the
impression of a much longer exposure right i'll take one more and then i think i'm going to move
from this composition i might do a vertical shot as well but it's getting quite breezy
look at this one
this is what's happening now one thing i've found with this single point perspective photography
is if you don't get the lines starting at exactly the same places on each side of the frames it
looks out and it just doesn't work so you really have to be precise in where you put your tripod
so let's say i was off center a little bit and i'll move the tripod over here
i'll frame it up so i'll get the marker bang in the middle it just looks out because those
converging lines start at different points in the frame so if i then come across
and get it as close to the center as possible and really work on getting a perfect position
oh that was a big one
that was a lot of water in there but as i was saying
if you get it in the center i think that's about right it's converging there converging
there it's almost impossible to get it perfect and when the wind's like this and when you're
battling the conditions it is a bit tricky but you can get it and you just got to be patient
you just got to move the camera around until you get that perfect positioning
starting to get really windy now i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to get a clean shot of
this again so you can see on this one the line starts down here and where's the other one the
other line starts down here so we could do the shuffling to the right a little bit that's closer
so you've really got to be precise that's where the grid on the back of the camera really comes
in handy i think that's it focus on the marker turn it to manual focus and then take the shot
oh that one's really blurry yeah that one didn't work at all oh sun's coming out
that was really annoying the sun came out lit up this marker but i was so not ready for it
there we go there's some sunlight come on get a good one
wow
the wind really started to pick up so i decided to head to the main beach in aberystwyth as it was a
much more sheltered place to take photographs and there's a wooden jetty that lends itself to this
type of photography really well although on the drive over it did start to rain a little bit more
one good thing with the rain coming in is that we've got these darker clouds in the
top of the frame so that should add to it and probably need to get the water droplets
off this now that wind has put a tiny bit of movement in it but it almost gives the impression
of the orton effect it does look strange and eerie but i'll put that on the screen now
now one thing i'm doing is looking around the frame trying to make sure everything's in line
the green marker was just breaching the horizon so i brought it up so it's not breaching it
at all i just hope i don't get too much wind because with a camera this high it will start
shaking in that wind now when i shot that wide frame i noticed when zooming in that
there was another shot within that frame so now what i've got is the horizon on the top third
the top marker triangle just on the horizon gonna focus on the marker
and take the shot 30th of a second f-16 iso 200.
now i'm back at home and dried off i've gone through the photographs and it's
really interesting to see how different they all look in the first location no matter where
i put the camera i couldn't quite get those converging lines to match on either side
i think this was because of the angle of the top of the jetty being out ever so slightly and this
was throwing off the whole shot now i was able to play around with it in photoshop to get this shot
which i'm quite happy with i adjusted the sky to get more detail out of it and as the spray
was brighter than the background that also showed up in the photograph when i switched the camera
to the vertical position i really liked this composition but that wind was so strong that
it was buffeting my camera and the tripod around and it was really hard to keep that camera still
i did get five shorter exposures which i blended together in photoshop and this gave the impression
of that longer exposure you can see that in this shot the clouds in the background are nicely
blurred out now let me know what you think do you prefer the first shot with that grungier sky
or do you prefer the second shot where i've got everything blurred out let me know in the comments
below the second location was so much better because it was sheltered from that southerly wind
while at the location when i was zooming in to check the focus on that first image
i found a better shot zoomed in so that's basically what i did i put the 28 to 200 in and
zoomed in i think i was shooting around about 110 millimeters for me this worked out a lot better
also because the jetty in this second location was a lot darker it stood out a lot more i was able
to push the brightness a lot further giving me that high key and minimalistic look in this shot
now this is a really fun project to do if you find yourself at the beach it's overcast and
there's not much going on and you're struggling to find compositions get an nd filter on your camera
and take some really long exposures all you need is something completely static in the foreground
and then you can blur out the sea and blur out the sky as well now if you want to see what else i do
when it's overcast and the lighting conditions aren't that favourable watch this video next
in it i show you how to find those amazing locations without any pressure whatsoever