Caribbean Photography: Light, Movement and time
07th February 2013
Caribbean Photography
Light, Movement and time
Following on from this weeks visit to Hope Beach, I thought it a good idea to use it as a demonstration of slowing down motion in bright lighting conditions.
One of the challenges of shooting in the Caribbean is the very bright light that we all love. When shooting seascapes where you may want to slow down the motion of the crashing waves up the beach, the speed of a shot become very important... and challenging.
To capture the crashing waves on Hope Beach, I wanted to get to a shutter speed of around 1 second. Normally to achieve this Id go out at dusk or dawn and capture the movement more easily due to the lack of light, but in the morning sunshine, its more difficult.
The answer is to use a very strong neutral density filter which drastically reduces the amount of light entering the camera.
A 10 stop filter, also known as an ND110 is what I chose to use. This reduces the shutter speed by 1000 times, so a shutter speed of say 1/500th without the filter becomes 2 seconds with it. There are Iphone apps (NDCalc) to help you calculate this, or charts are regularly printed in photographic magazines.
On the beach, the waves were doing two things that I wanted to capture; they were surging up the beach and then running back into the sea and directly in front of where I was standing, there were a range of rocks, which were catching the water and creating some nice patters as the water returned to the sea.
To see what shutter speed worked best, I took series of shots to capture different speeds; 1,2 and 3 seconds. Each speed gives a slightly different result and its up to personal choice which is preferred. My own preference, the initial shot at the top of this blog, was to blend the 1 & 2 second shots to get good patterns in both the rocks and coverage of the beach.
1 Second
2 seconds
3 seconds
Light, Movement and time
Following on from this weeks visit to Hope Beach, I thought it a good idea to use it as a demonstration of slowing down motion in bright lighting conditions.
One of the challenges of shooting in the Caribbean is the very bright light that we all love. When shooting seascapes where you may want to slow down the motion of the crashing waves up the beach, the speed of a shot become very important... and challenging.
To capture the crashing waves on Hope Beach, I wanted to get to a shutter speed of around 1 second. Normally to achieve this Id go out at dusk or dawn and capture the movement more easily due to the lack of light, but in the morning sunshine, its more difficult.
The answer is to use a very strong neutral density filter which drastically reduces the amount of light entering the camera.
A 10 stop filter, also known as an ND110 is what I chose to use. This reduces the shutter speed by 1000 times, so a shutter speed of say 1/500th without the filter becomes 2 seconds with it. There are Iphone apps (NDCalc) to help you calculate this, or charts are regularly printed in photographic magazines.
On the beach, the waves were doing two things that I wanted to capture; they were surging up the beach and then running back into the sea and directly in front of where I was standing, there were a range of rocks, which were catching the water and creating some nice patters as the water returned to the sea.
To see what shutter speed worked best, I took series of shots to capture different speeds; 1,2 and 3 seconds. Each speed gives a slightly different result and its up to personal choice which is preferred. My own preference, the initial shot at the top of this blog, was to blend the 1 & 2 second shots to get good patterns in both the rocks and coverage of the beach.
1 Second
2 seconds
3 seconds