I spent an incredibly blowy afternoon walking amongst the boats at Thorpe Bay this afternoon. I had hoped to be able to get some nice long exposures with great reflections in the water, but that wasn’t to be with the gale blowing in from the sea.
Still, I was able to get a few decent shots, and still have a few others that I can work on later.
I took a walk down to the Thames Barrier with my camera the other week and took this long exposure shot of Number 8, which is the second nearest barrier to the South shore. Featured is the black and white version but you can also see a colour version below.
I had a couple of pictures I wanted to go out and get last weekend of the lighthouse over at Dovercourt. It’s an hours drive away so I was not overly pleased to find the lighthouse surrounded in scaffolding…still, I’d got out and I have photoshop…so I got to it
Long exposure of this building in London – came out just as I wanted it to (after some work in photoshop of course) – the lens was the Samyang 24mm TS.
If you would like a print of this picture you can get one here – https://shop.markseton.co.uk/Black-and-White/i-wcqkt9Q/A
I’m the Chairman of Bishop’s Stortford Camera Club for the next two years. The season runs from September to April, but we always run a series of events throughout the year on most Tuesdays and occasional Saturdays. This year’s first Saturday trip was to the Henry Moore Studios and Gardens in dreadful weather for photography…blazing sunshine!
The longest day, or as photographers like to think, the shortest night, was on or around the 20th and 21st of June this year. There’s quite a gathering of photographers to be found roaming the streets of London on this night doing the sunset to sunrise over nighter and I joined the throngs this year.
I took a quick trot down to Lower Holbrook and my stretch of beach this lunchtime armed with my 2 cameras, one digital, one film and my 16 stop ND filter. This shot took 350 seconds to take..just short of 6 minutes. You then have to wait another 6 minutes whilst the camera sorts out all the noise issues this length of exposure takes – so in all the actual physical taking of the photograph took 12 minutes, give or take. I was going to turn this black and white…in fact I did, but didn’t like its look so reverted it to colour.
Whilst I was waiting for the digital camera to do its stuff I finished off my first black and white film with my new, old film camera. Hopefully this will be winging its way to be developed tomorrow, I can then gaze at a bunch of blank pieces of card as I try and work out what went wrong 😉
Because things regularly go wrong…I took a second long exposure shot after this one…but forgot to cover up the eye piece viewfinder meaning that light leaked into the camera and ruined the second shot…it was then time to pack up and dash back to work…
I popped back to the scene of a photo I took earlier this week. The tide, which I thought was going out, was a lot higher than last time I was here so I couldn’t get round the fallen tree. I didn’t mind, as this turned out to be just as interesting a picture.
I used my Hitech 10 stop filter, but really enjoyed the blue cast that I got SOCC so kept it, correcting the colour only in the bottom corner for the sand.
After the break, hear how I managed to get cut off by the tide…
This is Alton Water at Lemons Hill. I really had a hard time choosing between this and the colour version for today’s photo…but I’m a sucker for black and white! You can see the colour version after the break..
I rather kicked myself as I’d left my phone in the car and didn’t have a watch with me…so counted…I was aiming for 120 seconds – it was actually 141 seconds…
This photograph cost me a lot of money!
The aim of todays shot was a long exposure to get lots of streaky clouds…but I couldn’t get a long enough shutter speed even with my 10 stop ND filter…so I’ve bought a 16 stop ND filter to go with it – one of those new Hitech Firebrand ones everyone is raving about.
Visit again soon for my next excuse to buy more gear!
