Photo of the Month: August 2014

Slipway, St Monans Harbour

 7th August 2014, St Monans, East Neuk, Fife

I generally avoid photographing coastal scenes in the middle of summer when the sun has just past its zenith and beating down on all and sundry.  I had parked in St Monans to visit the Pittenweem Arts Festival just along the coast.  The tide had just started to ebb with the end of the stone slipway still wet which looked good in 'live view'.  To smooth the water I used a 10-stop ND filter and a Polarising filter helped with the glare. A shaded my lens/filters from the sun using a small pop-up reflector.  It sounds complicated but it only took a few minutes to set up.  To get the look I was wanting I used a Photoshop Plug-in called Topaz Adjust to bring out the textures in the stone and add some contrast.

Technical Info:

Taken with a Canon EOS 5D mkII
Zeiss Distagon T* 21/2.8 ZE lens

EXIF: ISO-100 / 30 sec / f/11
Filters: Lee Big Stopper (10-stop ND); B&W Polariser
RAW File converted to TIFF in Canon DPP, developed in AdobePhotoshop CS5 and Topaz Adjust.

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Go local: Fields at Crombie, Fife

The field is a few minutes’ drive from my home in Cairneyhill.  Not only is it planted with wheat, which provides the foreground interest, but it’s advantage over other local fields is that it’s on a small hill and gives views across to the north-west where the sun sets at this time of the year.  It’s a place I can get to if the sky suddenly develops some colour around sunset. A lay-by at the entrance to the field provided easy parking.  The channels created by the tractors make natural lead-in lines and break up the continuous swathes of green whilst adding shadow areas too.  Tonight I left the house at 9:35pm, got parked up at 9:40pm, was set up in the field by 9:50pm, spent 30 mins photographing the sunset and gloaming light following sunset and was back home for 10:35pm.  Pretty good mini-session I'd say.