Tag: Bexhill

Blog, Landscapes

Dawn

Dave Wares

Dawn

A landscape picture for a change.

Bexhill beach, looking back towards Hastings.

Met up with my friend Dan to catch the sunrise and do a spot of seascape photography. Got a few shots that I am happy with,  the light was quite pleasing but not the most spectacular I have seen. Mind you, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep getting up early as the days get longer and the sunrise gets earlier and earlier. Perhaps I’ll end up sticking to the evenings instead. 😉

When shooting wide angle landscapes I nearly always switch to manual mode as well as manually focusing using the Hyperfocal distance method. This way I can ensure that my shots will always be sharp back to front, this also allows me to quickly move around to find different compositions without having to alter anything except shutter speed. On my crop sensor Nikon Dslr, at a Focal length of 18mm and focusing between 5 and 7ft at f11, means my depth of field will be roughly 3ft to infinity. Also, a lens usually performs best in terms of sharpness (where more depth of field is desired) somewhere in the mid range of its aperture settings. So in theory I should be getting the best possible results at apertures of around f11ish (give or take a stop), without getting too particular of course. Stopping your lens down to say f16/f22 will start to produce refraction and as a result a slight softness, which is sort of counter intuitive. That doesn’t stop me stopping down too if I need a longer shutter speed but I also use ND filters as another way of reducing light.

Shot using an ND4 grey grad filter to balance the land and sky. Processed in Lightroom 5.3.

Blog, Landscapes

Submerged

Dave Wares

Submerged

Bexhill Beach.

Some fabulous rock formations are exposed when the tide is out and yes I was stood in the water, wellies on of course. It was this shot that I believe the second of my tripod’s rubber feet got lost!

  Filters used: ND4 + ND4 Grad. Processed in Lightroom 5.

Thanks for stopping by.

Blog, Landscapes

Up early again

Dave Wares

Yes, your truly managed to pull himself out of bed for another mornings shoot. This time I wanted to make some images at a stretch of beach between Hastings and Bexhill, having passed this beach many times on the train and seeing the large amount of rock exposed while the tide is out I had to make a visit. Once again the sky was too clear for my liking but this was not that much of a problem as there was more than enough going on in the foreground. I arrived at the beach while it was still dark to give me plenty of time to look for the best spot, and just as it was starting to get light I happened upon this area, where there was a nice mix of rock, sand ripples and water. Happy with my location I went about trying to find the best composition.

I was most pleased to find this patch where the sand and water seems to sweep around the bottom of the picture. I took this landscape version first then took the vertical shot (above). I like both versions but there is something about the vertical one that seems to connect the viewer to the scene even more,  a greater sense of ‘being there’ perhaps. Maybe that’s just me though.

Having tried a few different compositions I headed out to the waters edge in an attempt to get some misty water action, but alas the tide (once again) was too calm. Due to the increase in light my exposures were rapidly getting shorter and by the time I found this group of rocks I was lucky if I got a couple of seconds at f22.

All of this happened before the sun had got over the horizon; in fact when it did rise the atmosphere had all but evaporated and I ended up tripping the shutter only a couple more times. Happy with my results I packed up and headed for home and a nice mug of coffee.