Behind the Scene - The Stormy Bay

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Welcome to the first 'Behind the Scene' article. In these new articles, I will share information about the tricks and techniques employed to capture my most favorite photographs. In this first 'Behind the Scene', we will look at my most recent shot, 'Stormy Bay'.

Background

Kimmeridge Bay has so much potential, and every time I take a trip there the conditions are always different making it a great coastal area to photograph on the regular basis. The geology is different all around the bay, the tide levels dramatically changes by up to 4-5 metres, and the light is always different.

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The Goal

For this particular trip, I was heading to Kimmeridge to take some shots with my new BW ND1000, a 10 stop neutral density filter. the forecast was clear and the sun was shining so I headed out early to put it to use when the golden hour - the hour before sunset - came around. As this was the first trip out with the 10 stop ND, I didn't have my hopes set too high. I had already checked the tide times and the tide was coming in, so I had already planned on using some foreground rocks as leading lines - I just needed to find a decent composition.

I found this group of rocks that formed a very nice leading line to the end of the bay. The sun was directly above the end of the cliffs and the cloud was also headed that way. I opted for an ultra wide 10mm landscape format shot. I set the camera in manual mode and manually focused to the hyperfocal distance to ensure sufficient front-back sharpness through out the scene. The tripod was set sturdy and low to the ground, and the composition was tweaked until my spirit level hotshoe indicated a perfectly level horizon. The camera was then put into mirror lockup mode and I connected my remote shutter release cable.

Because I hadn't used the 10 stop neutral density filter before and some experimentation was needed, I opted for a shorter exposure of 2 minutes @ f/8 ISO100 instead of going for an insanely long exposure in the region of something like 15 minutes @ f/11 ISO100.

Metering the Scene

To meter the scene, I first spot metered the rocks themselves as they held a good mid tone to work from. I then roughly guessed the increase the exposure time that would be needed and added my 10 stop ND filter. Because I was still an hour away from sunset, the sun was still high in the sky and although obscured by the incoming storm front, the top left part of the sky was still a good 4-5 stops brighter than the foreground. To counter this I also added a Lee 0.6 (2 stop) Hard Neutral Density Graduate Filter to prevent the clouds from blowing the highlights. Technically I should of used a 3 stop ND grad for the sky but I didn't want to underexpose and lose the detail in the grassy areas of the cliff top.

Because I knew that the 2 stop ND grad wouldn't be quite enough to prevent the clouds directly in front of the sun from over exposing, I took 2 separate exposures, one at the pre-determined 2 minutes, and then another at 20 seconds to ensure that at least one image maintained all of the sky detail.

After these two shots were taken, the cloud had completely blocked the setting sun and all light was lost from the area so I chatted to a couple of other photographers who had already packed off and waited until it was dark and I was the last photographer at the bay. Then I headed home to check the shots.

Post Processing

The exposure for the two minutes was virtually spot on except for some minor burning to the brighter clouds and their reflections, which was expected anyway and the reason the shorter, 20 second exposure was taken.

I opened both images in Photoshop CS3 from Adobe Camera RAW and set to work on the quick task of creating a composite from the two exposures. I added the shorter exposure to a layer above the brighter and added a 'hide all' layer mask. I then painted on the mask to 'reveal' the burned details of the clouds. The layer was then duplicated along with the mask, and the mask was cleared and repainted to reveal the burned details in the reflections.

The Photoshop Layers Pallete

Finally a slight curves adjustment was made to complete the final image. Total processing time was around 5 minutes.

A screen shot of the two 'before' and final 'after' shot appears below.