perfect light

One evening last week, with snow forecast for the night, the light was about as perfect as it could get for landscape photography.  It really was that good.

So, I knew I had to get out and take advantage of the wonderful conditions.  But where to go?  The mountains?  The coast?

Remembering my recent sunset visit to Limeslade Bay (see my blog post of 12 February 2018) when I missed the light by seconds, I decided to re-visit that location.  This time though, I struggled further onto the rocks.  And it was a real struggle for me.  But I spotted some lovely "contrasty" green algae that I wanted in the foreground of my image, so I had to get near that.

I’ve written before that I don’t just reel off image after image; but I took thirty-six images that evening.  Well, in reality only twelve as I was bracketing them into sets of three: one at the correct exposure and then one at one stop under and over exposed respectively.  I then merged the three images to achieve the finished picture. 

I don’t normally do this, but the dynamic range in the scene was so great that even with a graduated filter fitted to my lens, the difference in light levels was so great that there was no way I’d have been able to capture all the detail in the highlights and shadows any other way. ***

Fujifilm X-T2, Fujinon 10-24mm f4.0 lens at 10mm

3 images: 1/8^th, 1/16^th and ¼ second at f11; ISO 200

tripod, camera self-timer release

 *** well, if I had a very expensive medium format camera, then...


post script: I have added a video to my recent "home office" post for anyone who fancies seeing it.  Thanks