Blog: November 29th - December 9th
21st December 2011
In: Blog
It's at this time of year that photographers gather at dawn on the beach at Durdle Door, hoping to get a shot of the sun rising through the arch. Of course, a successful shot depends on being there in exactly the right conditions, so more often than not, shoots end in disappointment, and unless you're really lucky, it can take multiple visits to get what you want. This is one I managed last year:
It's a reasonable shot, and the starburst effect works well, but there's clearly room for improvement - in particular, more interest in the sky would be nice.
I've been back a couple of times so far this year, trying to get a better version of the shot, but with no success so far. This morning, a thick bank of cloud on the horizon meant that not only was the sun covered as it rose, but also there was no colour in the sky whatsoever.
My fallback position was to shoot some long exposures, with simple, bold compositions, such as these:
In the end, I went for total minimalism, and this turned out to be my favourite shot of the morning.
December 7th 2011
Even though I take pictures for a living, I don’t manage to get out with the camera as often as I’d like, as photography still has to be fitted around other commitments - in my case, mostly writing, the admin that comes with self-employment, and family commitments - mainly consisting of the school run and ferrying my son to and from swimming training. And although I’ve managed to get out with the camera a fair bit over the last seven days, it’s never been when the light has been at its best.
I’ve been after a decent sunrise looking over the Pinnacles towards Swanage for a while now, and had hoped that this morning was going to be it.... However, despite what the met office had promised, the light really wasn’t great. Eventually, a little colour crept up through the cloud, so I took a couple of shots, with this one probably being the best of them.
The colour also found its way into the sky above Old Harry Rocks, so it was worth a shot with the camera pointing north as well. A ten second exposure, combined with pastel colours has resulted in something of a painterly look.
November 29th 2011
Hello and welcome to the first instalment of my new blog - keeping people up to date with what I’ve been up to and also featuring the occasional ramblings about wider issues in photography and life in general.
The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a frustrating time photographically, with the weather, family commitments and equipment failure all conspiring to prevent me from venturing out as much as I’d like to get new material....
However, on Sunday morning I took a trip to Mupe Bay with a couple of other local photographers. Mupe is hard to access, being a fair trek across the Lulworth Army Ranges, with quite a portion of that being a steep climb. It’s very isolated and there’s iffy phone reception, so it’s generally a good idea to go with others. It’s worth the effort to get there, though, being one of those locations, like Porth Nanven in Cornwall, which seems to have been made specifically for photographers; a really dramatic stretch of coastline, with rocky ledges leading in to the picture towards distant focal points, and craggy rocks poking out of the sea.
Having made such an effort to get there, it was disappointing that the weather wasn’t more favourable; we were met by a grey and stormy dawn, with huge amounts of spray making any attempt at photography difficult... Perhaps at an easier to get to location, we might not have bothered at all, but we were determined to make the trip worthwhile.
Out of the few shots I took, this was probably the most successful. It’s certainly not a great shot, but it shows that photography is possible even in really challenging conditions.
It's a reasonable shot, and the starburst effect works well, but there's clearly room for improvement - in particular, more interest in the sky would be nice.
I've been back a couple of times so far this year, trying to get a better version of the shot, but with no success so far. This morning, a thick bank of cloud on the horizon meant that not only was the sun covered as it rose, but also there was no colour in the sky whatsoever.
My fallback position was to shoot some long exposures, with simple, bold compositions, such as these:
In the end, I went for total minimalism, and this turned out to be my favourite shot of the morning.
December 7th 2011
Even though I take pictures for a living, I don’t manage to get out with the camera as often as I’d like, as photography still has to be fitted around other commitments - in my case, mostly writing, the admin that comes with self-employment, and family commitments - mainly consisting of the school run and ferrying my son to and from swimming training. And although I’ve managed to get out with the camera a fair bit over the last seven days, it’s never been when the light has been at its best.
I’ve been after a decent sunrise looking over the Pinnacles towards Swanage for a while now, and had hoped that this morning was going to be it.... However, despite what the met office had promised, the light really wasn’t great. Eventually, a little colour crept up through the cloud, so I took a couple of shots, with this one probably being the best of them.
The colour also found its way into the sky above Old Harry Rocks, so it was worth a shot with the camera pointing north as well. A ten second exposure, combined with pastel colours has resulted in something of a painterly look.
November 29th 2011
Hello and welcome to the first instalment of my new blog - keeping people up to date with what I’ve been up to and also featuring the occasional ramblings about wider issues in photography and life in general.
The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a frustrating time photographically, with the weather, family commitments and equipment failure all conspiring to prevent me from venturing out as much as I’d like to get new material....
However, on Sunday morning I took a trip to Mupe Bay with a couple of other local photographers. Mupe is hard to access, being a fair trek across the Lulworth Army Ranges, with quite a portion of that being a steep climb. It’s very isolated and there’s iffy phone reception, so it’s generally a good idea to go with others. It’s worth the effort to get there, though, being one of those locations, like Porth Nanven in Cornwall, which seems to have been made specifically for photographers; a really dramatic stretch of coastline, with rocky ledges leading in to the picture towards distant focal points, and craggy rocks poking out of the sea.
Having made such an effort to get there, it was disappointing that the weather wasn’t more favourable; we were met by a grey and stormy dawn, with huge amounts of spray making any attempt at photography difficult... Perhaps at an easier to get to location, we might not have bothered at all, but we were determined to make the trip worthwhile.
Out of the few shots I took, this was probably the most successful. It’s certainly not a great shot, but it shows that photography is possible even in really challenging conditions.
