The Photo

Before I start anything I'd like to dedicate this piece to a fantastic landscape photographer on DA - someone who has inspired me to dig out the ND Grads and use them for sunsets again;



After a week of thunderstorms and cool weather we had amazing skies yesterday - lots of sun and cloud. I haven't caught a proper sunset in a while so I decided to head north from Wolfville to Scots Bay, Nova Scotia - a tiny community just before Cape Split on the New Minas Basin. When you drive through Scots Bay there is a beach off of Wharf Road where you can park your car and take a walk along the ocean. The sun sets around 8:45, and high tide was around 7:20 last night. When I got there the water was just starting to go out so it was uncovering all of the large rocks that are usually submerged (even the remains of an old wharf!). Beyond the two rocks in the surf you'll see a series of dots along the horizon that are slightly blurred - these are buoys for fishing. Behind them are the hills of Cape Split and small homes nestled in the rocks. While taking photos you could see seals in the distance - a magic time of day.

The misty effect that you see is the movement of water over the course of a 20 second exposure. As the sun hit the horizon the tide began moving out faster as the beach is fairly shallow. In the span of 20 minutes it probably receeded about 30 feet. When I would find a rock pattern that I liked I'd have less than a minute to set up the tripod and compose a frame before being forced to follow the waves farther out. I used the Canon 10-22 for this (at roughly 15mm as the filter holders begin to block the lens when you go wider on the zoom). On the end of the lens was a Tiffen polarizer to cut some of the reflective glare, a Hoya ND 8x to cut the available light by 8 stops, and two Singh-Ray ND Grads. The Hoya came in handy as it allowed me to keep the aperature fairly wide open (f10). I didn't want to stop down any farther as I've recently discovered that the lens defraction is really bad as you get closer to f22. The first Singh-Ray was a 3x Reverse Grad that I used to cut the light from the horizon upwards (most NDs cut light from the sky down). The second Singh-Ray was a 2x traditional Grad to cut some of the light above and create the vignetting effect that you see.

PhotoShop work is limited to dust removal in the sky and the addition of a border / text.

I have a few others from the evening that I'd like to share with you over the next few weeks - I hope you enjoy!

Tools

Canon EOS 20D | Canon 10-22mm | ISO 100 | f10 | s20 | Tiffen Polarizer | Hoya ND 8x | Singh-Ray 3x Reverse Grad ND | Singh-Ray 2x Grad ND