I started the day with all good intentions! I had a couple of places that I wanted to visit, one was Dundee, to shoot the curvature of the Tay rail bridge. I arrived well before sunrise to capture the morning light, I had previously looked at a couple of images on-line and studied where I wanted to set up and what I wanted from the overall image. My thoughts on the image were simplicity and minimal content as I think this captures the drama ( less is more ) I was shooting at F11 using the 16-35 lens as this gives maximum sharpness to the photo and perfect DOF.
Sometimes the idea of a photo and what you want to achieve just doesn't materialise into the image you were thinking of! There is so little time to shoot long exposures in the morning as the light changes dramatically. This was the first time at this location so I kind of knew that it wasn’t going to be perfect, but Im a little disappointed with this one. Simplicity is one thing, but there is nothing in the shot! On hindsight, I would have chosen a different angle and focal length to fill the frame more rather than the bridge being on the outside with a very bare foreground.
The Zigzag Pier at St Monans is always a favourite with photographers as it’s so unusual. The difficulty is, being there at the right time. To get the perfect shot (well my perfect shot) is to wait until high tide coincides with sunrise, obviously this doesn’t happen very often. Then there is the weather, there could be high winds as it’s on the east coast so extremely challenging if you are planning an exposure time more than 250/1 of a second.
This shot was taken just after sunrise and about an hour before high tide but unfortunately, there were really high winds so the lens was moving, even at an exposure time of around 4 seconds. I chose this time as I really wanted water motion at the bottom of the pier. I managed to get about 4 shots off at F11 at 5 seconds with a 6 stop filter before the waves came crashing around me soaking the front end of the camera.
Like most of my recent shots, I like the simplicity of it. I chose to shoot the pier centre frame as I think, on this occasion it works.
This is a shot of the Bass Rock from St Monans, It was taken on the spur of the moment! there were dark clouds over the sky and sun was lighting up the clouds with a brilliant glow. As I had my other camera on the tripod, I used the Nikon 7100 crop censor camera with the 70-200 full frame lens giving me an effective focal length of just over 300mm. The sky was absolutely gorgeous and there was a bird sitting on a post to add that little bit extra to the photo.
Overall, it could have been a better shoot but at the end of the day, it was thoroughly enjoyable. I will be back to the same locations with a greater insight on each location, worth the effort I think!