Lowlight Highlights

Seascape, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

It’s been a hell of a fortnight, yet another course for a week last week, then 3 days in Birmingham. I cannot believe how good it is to come home.

I signed off my last post with a comment that I’ve nearly had the camera for a year. Something I first tried when I got the camera was to blur water. I was disappointed with the results and as I’ve spent most of the last week or so on planes I’ve had the chance to read plenty of photo magazines and one article on low light photography sparked my interest in ‘water blurring’ again.

Obviously when you slow shutter speed you increase exposure, meaning that pictures get blown out unless you limit the amount of light.

I don’t own any ND grad filters so the only way to limit light was to go out at either dawn or dusk. As dawn is currently at about 8.30am in Scotland, this wasn’t much of hardship. So, on Sunday I was out and about on the beach, in the dark, slipping about on freezing rocks, trying to take pictures.

The easiest way I’ve found to blur water is to go into into ‘A’ (aperture) mode and crank the dial all the way round to f22. Aperture mode sets shutter speed automatically, and at f22 the camera will select a slow shutter speed. Also at f22, you’ll have just about everything in focus.

Once you’ve cracked that, the next challenge is stability, as you’re going for slow shutter speeds, the slightest shake has a massive impact on the final image. Given that I was on a really unstable surface and dancing around in the surf, a tripod was just about impossible to use. I think a monopod would have worked, but I don’t have one!

So I took to building piles of rocks to the height I needed and balancing the camera on the top. I then set the shutter to fire after two seconds and just shot and shot until I got the water effect I wanted. Because every wave is different, you have to experiment a lot before you get the desired outcome.

Anyway, the image above was one of my top 3, all of which are on flickr. Great fun and a brilliant way to de-stress after a difficult week.