Friday night's beautiful golden sunset, with the waves flowing over the rocks, in West Vancouver.
I waited for a wave to wash over this flat section of rock and wash off, taking a 0.8 second exposure to capture the motion of the water along with the last rays of the sunset, lighting up the clouds from below. I used a 3 stop graduated ND filter to control the brightness of the sky compared to the ground, and a polariser to enhance the reflections of the light from the water.
Thanks to everyone for the awesome response to my previous photo of Coal Harbour at sunset!
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
Nice job saving the details in the cliff using the GND filter. So much to like including the motion blur of the clouds and milky water. I could go on but will settle for a fav.
Very nice!!!
You seem to be able to capture colour in these low light shots, in a way that I can't. I know you have superior glass to me, and I wonder if you a bracketing and then combining the layers and using an HDR-ish method - something I have never done. I am wondering if you use polarisers in thots like this or just for water/clouds?
I uploaded a lot of low light shots from the Middle East but they don't come out like I want so I clearly need to keep trying! :)
Great work.
While I do love my expensive wide-angle lens and full-frame camera, and wouldn't give them up for the world, with the exception of my night sky shots (Milky Way, etc.), most of my photos merely benefit from this gear, rather then require them. A modern DSLR like your 7D (or a good mirrorless camera) will be able to produce very comparable results at low ISOs. I always use a tripod for my photos so that I can shoot at low ISO settings even in challenging light, giving me the most data to play with when I get the image onto the computer.
The output from a crop-frame camera and a consumer-grade lens may have more shadow noise, more chromatic aberration, more lens flare, less corner sharpness, and so on, but those are minor technical defects that most people won't even notice, especially at low-resolution sizes such as used on this site.
The most important thing I find is to be there at the right time, and get the light that is best for the shot. This seascape was taken only about a minute before the sun set, which meant that the sun was at its most colourful (as the light was passing through a lot of atmosphere), and also at its least bright. Ten minutes earlier and the sky would have been overexposed, or I'd have lost detail in the shadows of the rocks. Two minutes later and I've missed the sunset.
Similarly, for night shots, I will very rarely shoot when it's truly dark, preferring to shoot in the hour after sunset when there is still light in the sky -- this will also be reflected off buildings, giving a nice contrast between the deep blue of the sky and the artificial city lights. (As you get closer to the equator, the time you have from sunset to true darkness is much shorter, giving you a smaller window to work with).
I do use polarisers, especially for my landscape and seascape work, although care needs to be taken with wide angle lenses as they can introduce darker bands in the sky. This shot used a polariser, rotated so that the reflected light was allowed to pass through, which emphasises them. I don't tend to use a polariser for city shots, although there are occasional exceptions.
Another filter which I love, and use on almost all of my seascape work in particular, is a graduated ND filter. This is a filter that is half-dark and half-clear, allowing me to position it on the lens so that filter darkens the bright sky while letting the darker foreground through unaltered. This can be considered a 'physical' form of HDR -- instead of capturing multiple shots to cover the dynamic range of the scene, you are reducing the dynamic range of the scene to bring it into something the camera can capture in a single photo. Without this, it can be difficult to capture a full range of light and shadow in a sunset scene without resorting to HDR.
Regardless of whether I use HDR or not (I try not to, but I'm not afraid to do so when the graduated filter or other solutions aren't sufficient), I will also do quite a lot of post-processing work in the 'digital darkroom' to bring the colour, light and shadow to where I want it to be. I very rarely do serious modifications (such as subbing in a new sky or anything like that, not that there's anything wrong with that when done well), but I will do dodging and burning, saturation and colour balance adjustments, and so on, to bring the image from the raw data captured by the camera to the scene that I saw with the eye.
I hope that helps a little, let me know if you have any questions :)
@abirkill Alexis, thank you for your reply. I know a grad-filter would really help and have owned polarisers in the past but don't have them in my kit at the moment. I need to invest in one of each to at least get me started on the way to producing the kind of shots I want.
I really appreciate your advice and want to say keep posting on here for us to see your work it really does inspire! :)
Alexis, I love this and of course it is a fav.........I could only dream of 70 favs on one of my shots, yet you haven't even made PP......which just goes to show what an awesome photographer you are :)
This is lovely. I've FAVed it.
It caught my eye as I was scrolling through the last few images of all those whom I'm following. Hope you have a great weekend!
Beautiful shot. I loved reading your explanation. I find it invaluable for a beginner like me. Your knowledge and beautiful photos are really a huge inspiration. Congrats on the TT. Fav
You are the master of such beautiful shots and and even more so with your tutorials. I am certain that you have become the perfect mentor for many of us who see your sublime photography.
Huge congratulations. ..fav!
You seem to be able to capture colour in these low light shots, in a way that I can't. I know you have superior glass to me, and I wonder if you a bracketing and then combining the layers and using an HDR-ish method - something I have never done. I am wondering if you use polarisers in thots like this or just for water/clouds?
I uploaded a lot of low light shots from the Middle East but they don't come out like I want so I clearly need to keep trying! :)
Great work.
While I do love my expensive wide-angle lens and full-frame camera, and wouldn't give them up for the world, with the exception of my night sky shots (Milky Way, etc.), most of my photos merely benefit from this gear, rather then require them. A modern DSLR like your 7D (or a good mirrorless camera) will be able to produce very comparable results at low ISOs. I always use a tripod for my photos so that I can shoot at low ISO settings even in challenging light, giving me the most data to play with when I get the image onto the computer.
The output from a crop-frame camera and a consumer-grade lens may have more shadow noise, more chromatic aberration, more lens flare, less corner sharpness, and so on, but those are minor technical defects that most people won't even notice, especially at low-resolution sizes such as used on this site.
The most important thing I find is to be there at the right time, and get the light that is best for the shot. This seascape was taken only about a minute before the sun set, which meant that the sun was at its most colourful (as the light was passing through a lot of atmosphere), and also at its least bright. Ten minutes earlier and the sky would have been overexposed, or I'd have lost detail in the shadows of the rocks. Two minutes later and I've missed the sunset.
Similarly, for night shots, I will very rarely shoot when it's truly dark, preferring to shoot in the hour after sunset when there is still light in the sky -- this will also be reflected off buildings, giving a nice contrast between the deep blue of the sky and the artificial city lights. (As you get closer to the equator, the time you have from sunset to true darkness is much shorter, giving you a smaller window to work with).
I do use polarisers, especially for my landscape and seascape work, although care needs to be taken with wide angle lenses as they can introduce darker bands in the sky. This shot used a polariser, rotated so that the reflected light was allowed to pass through, which emphasises them. I don't tend to use a polariser for city shots, although there are occasional exceptions.
Another filter which I love, and use on almost all of my seascape work in particular, is a graduated ND filter. This is a filter that is half-dark and half-clear, allowing me to position it on the lens so that filter darkens the bright sky while letting the darker foreground through unaltered. This can be considered a 'physical' form of HDR -- instead of capturing multiple shots to cover the dynamic range of the scene, you are reducing the dynamic range of the scene to bring it into something the camera can capture in a single photo. Without this, it can be difficult to capture a full range of light and shadow in a sunset scene without resorting to HDR.
I will also use HDR when appropriate, such as here:
http://365project.org/abirkill/365/2013-10-14
Regardless of whether I use HDR or not (I try not to, but I'm not afraid to do so when the graduated filter or other solutions aren't sufficient), I will also do quite a lot of post-processing work in the 'digital darkroom' to bring the colour, light and shadow to where I want it to be. I very rarely do serious modifications (such as subbing in a new sky or anything like that, not that there's anything wrong with that when done well), but I will do dodging and burning, saturation and colour balance adjustments, and so on, to bring the image from the raw data captured by the camera to the scene that I saw with the eye.
I hope that helps a little, let me know if you have any questions :)
I really appreciate your advice and want to say keep posting on here for us to see your work it really does inspire! :)
Steve
It caught my eye as I was scrolling through the last few images of all those whom I'm following. Hope you have a great weekend!
Huge congratulations. ..fav!