So I set my alarm to wake me up at 4:30am this morning, got out of bed, put on like 3 layers of clothes and my WYD windbreaker jacket, grabbed my gear and loaded it all in the car. I took the M5 which was surprisingly busy for 5am in the morning, in any case I got the Mahon Pool just when high tide came in. It was still dark but you could just see the faintest light from the sunrise. So I didn't have much time to work with.
It was my first time there so I didn't really know what to expect, there was this really high orange street light that lit up the area, I would've preferred a white one but oh well, I experimented with a few shots at varying shutter speeds in M mode keeping a small aperture and ISO 100 throughout most of the shoot - I'll explain why in a sec. This experience made me want to get an neutral density filter so bad now...
Ok, so why those settings... There were 2 things I wanted to get with this shoot;
- movement of water
- the sunrise
With movement of any kind, you would need a longer shutter in order to capture action from beginning to end, thus the shutter speed was my variable. I kept the aperture small, starting from f/8 to f/22 as the day got brighter; what this does is reduce the amount of light that hits the sensor, as I wanted to capture as much movement as possible without overexposing, this was the best way to do it. I kept the ISO at 100 to reduce the sensitivity of the sensor so it wouldn't pick up as much electronic noise.I also used bulb shutter for a few shots, the longest exposure time I took was about 70 seconds, some of which came out slightly blurry as there were really strong winds around, despite having a very sturdy tripod, it still shook slightly (though fairly seldomly).
While walking around I slipped on some algae which I didn't see and cut my knee on a rock in the process, it ripped through my jeans too! I fell with the camera and tripod too, but my Nikki only managed to get a small scratch on the side of the lens... Lucky I had the lens hood on! Otherwise I think the glass would've been scratched!On to sunrises! The sun is the biggest source of light that we get, so it'd be pretty useless to take photos of it with a big aperture, so I had a very small aperture (f/22) and once again varied my shutter speed to get varying results. By the time I ran up the hill the sun was well and truly risen, albeit initially it was behind a bit of cloud. Getting a well lit scene I used a shutter speed of 1/6 which obviously would lead to overexposure of the sun (you can't really underexpose the sun!) but in the case of shooting sunrises, this is a desired effect. I took a few shots with a faster shutter speeds all the way up to 1/4000 to isolate the sun light to just the area around the sun, which gave it a sunset look.
A problem I had is quite a common one, everything in the foreground was underexposed due to the overpowering sunlight, you can overcome this by using your flash as a fill light, this would light up the nearby objects without having the need to REALLY overexpose the sun/sky.
What did I learn?
I learnt to wear proper boots! HA! I would like to do this again when I get that neutral density filter, and preferably a fluid head tripod too! It was annoying adjusting the legs to get close enough to being level. I had to straighten every single one of my photos in photoshop, with this shoot it wasn't a big deal, but imagine doing it for 200+ photos...
So what's next?
-Motorbike Shoot!
A mate of mine recently bought a new motorbike, he wants me to make it look pretty hahaha!
-VIVID SYDNEY!
I missed out on it last year, didn't think much of it until I saw some photos from friends... Planning to go on Saturday evening and make a night out of it, according to Google, it will be clear, though there is slight chance of rain around 10pm... I hope not...
