That day was a bad one. Heavy winds pushed low-standing clouds over the sea towards the coast. Clouds, full of water and ready to pour it over the scene. So, we had to secure the doors when getting out of the cars. A mixture of rain, hail, and snow welcomed us. No hard rain, but enough to keep some of us inside the cars. To make it even worst, the ground was covered merely with ice and rain poodles on top of them. Very careful movements were an absolute necessity. These were not the conditions we came for. What a difference to 2016, when I was there for the first time.
This time we needed the shortest shutter speeds, even when using wide-angle lenses. While setting up a tripod was possible in those conditions, it was impossible to use it. The wind not only pushed the tripod and made longer exposures impossible, but the guts were also even so strong to make the tripod tumble down. So, I opted for another way to get a long exposure of the waves: I put my beanbag on top of the concrete wall securing the parking ground from the cliff, and pressed the camera in the bag. That way, everything was stable enough for a 20-second exposure at 97mm.
For a long, I was hoping for such a location and the right conditions. You see, you have to be open-minded when arriving at a location. Don’t stick to the idea of recreating the images you have seen online, in books, or have on your bucket list. Look around and discover what the scene and the conditions have to offer. Benefit from what you have in front of you. In German, we have a saying: better the sparrow in the hand than the pigeon on the roof (Besser den Spatz in der Hand also die Taube auf dem Dach.).
For a couple of months, I work to reduce my backlog of undeveloped images whenever I have some spare time. Over the years, some (many) folders of undeveloped images found their way only to my external disk The oldest folder is dated from 2009 😲. In general, these folders contain quite often only images of flowers, birds, cats or so and nothing from more important trips. But, also a couple of trips are among these, just like the one, I’m talking about today.
Back in October 2014, I was in Flandern at the Belgium coast. A few images were already developed, but the majority were still waiting.
When looking at the image files, I remembered at once, why they were still waiting for development. Especially in the upper parts of the images, the sensor captured a lot of dust spots. I haven’t counted them, but I guess, each image had more than a hundred of these spots to be removed. Fortunately, I took those images raw, so that the removal didn’t cause any quality problems and the raw development software is so well developed to remove these spots in general without any glitches.
Although having dust spots is not that uncommon, the enormous number of them, I was faced with, is. You have to clean your sensor when photographing with a camera with interchangeable lenses regularly. Back in film days, you did this each time when putting a new film in. Now, having a digital sensor, the sensor has to be cleaned regularly. In case, you’re not familiar with this, drop me a comment below.
As I said, having dust spots is annoying but not uncommon. But, the camera I was using at that time, had a huge problem. Those spots were not only dust. In addition, each shutter release distributed a tiny amount of machine oil being used for the mechanical part of the shutter over the sensor. Fortunately, this issue was accepted by the manufacturer and a portion of this camera model based on a certain range of serial numbers was called back for repair. Also, I would have been glad, if the call back was much earlier.
I’m in a hurry, but I want to share some information with you. With the discount code “Excirefire30” your customers can get a 30% discount on all products in the Excire shop. The code is valid from November 21st until December 4th, 2022.
You don’t know, what Excire is? No problem. It’s the perfect solution for finding images in your archive. Excire Foto helps you find the searched images without manually tagging the images. Tags are set by the AI. Excire Foto analyses your images by content and colors. In the past, I published a review. Although the review was for version 1.0, it’s still a good starting point. The latest version can even find duplicates and much more. Give it a try. There’s a free demo available to test all features with your own images. Try it and be amazed.
This week for LAPC Patti asks us, to spend some time with a subject to find the ‘right’ angle of view. In the past, I already walked you through a set that way, like here, here, or here.
Today, I’ve chosen a slightly different approach than cropping or getting closer. Instead, I visited the same location on three consecutive days and spend some time on my subject: driftwood on a quite remote part of a beach.
full-frame 16 mm (fish-eye) – 14:34h
full-frame 20mm 14:14h
full-frame 20mm 21:42h
On each of these three days, I was happy with my final image and I still am. But, when I was back the next day, that piece of driftwood pulled me in again. Each of the days (4 in total – but during my first visit I wasn’t in that particular part, where these trees were laying in the water), I spend hours on that beach and working some time with these trees. Because of the remoteness, the beach and the cliff above are more or less untouched. No-one tidies up, except Mother Nature herfelf. So, you can discover a lot of things.
My conclusion of those days is (and I also experienced this in other places too), sometimes you have to call it a day, pack your gear, and go home. But, you have to come back another day (or time) to find the final image.
A wonderful challenge and again a great opportunity to look through the archive and discover the images from a different perspective.
Maybe, I was able to inspire you to dig in your archive and find some images, you can publish your images on your blog and set a link to Patti’s inspiration post. Don’t forget to tag it with the tag LENS-ARTIST, so that we can find it.
Starting from today, Luminar Neo 1.0.2 update is available. As usual, this minor update is free for all current owners / subscribers. In case you don’t have it yet and want to get it at discount, you should use the code “SOLANER” before Mar 31st at checkout.
Because of the huge size of the bay and the strong wind from the sea, the big waves came near the shore. so, I was able to get a couple of nice images from only the waves.
One small hint: When using code HAPPYVALENTINE during checkout, you can save 15% when buying Excire Foto before Feb 20th, 2022. Excire Foto is the perfect tool to find certain images on your disks by searching with keywords either from EXIF data or by the results from the artificial tagging engine. Do you want to know more? There’s already a post here in my blog. Although the post is quite old and talks about version 1.0, the last update to version 1.3 was released in December 2021.
Second hint: when you’re in the US you can benefit from code CNFL-56 and save 43%, because Excire US celebrates the Super Bowl (advertising because of the affiliate link)
Because of the huge size of the bay and the strong wind from the sea, the big waves came near the shore. so, I was able to get a couple of nice images from only the waves.
Because of the huge size of the bay and the strong wind from the sea, the big waves came near the shore. so, I was able to get a couple of nice images from only the waves.
Although this image is quite similar to the one I published here last week, it has a very different ambient. That’s because of the exposure time. Last week’s image was taken at 1/80s, while this one needed 25 seconds 😲
MyBlog - solaner 