Capture one

At the New Brighton Pier in Christchurch, I spent several hours taking photos until it was dark. Playing with several compostions and photography techniques. A location like this we can shot for various different results.

  • HDR – Take bracketed photos to merge into a HDR photo later on your computer.
  • Long Exposure – Using a ND filter, create long exposures. Capturing movement of the clouds and the water in a single photo
  • Panoramic View – Turning your camera on its side (portrait mode), and taking a series of overlapping photos to create a panoramic shot using Photoshop or other favourite tools

It’s often hard to remember that you can shot the same location in several different ways to get totally different photographs. I have remembered and forgotten but in order to help myself, I create a small checksheet which I keep in my camera bag so that I can remember. I am starting to get better.

About the Photo

This photo was a long exposure shot, taken on my Canon 24-105mm lens with a ND 9-stop filter. I using a cable shutter release to take the photo in Bulb mode (B) which allows me to keep the shutter open for as long as I wish. Therefore, it does take a bit of trial an error to get your settings right. I shot the first shot at 15 seconds which was too dark, then tried 40 seconds which looked a little overexposed so chose 30 seconds exposure which I kept and processed in Lightroom 4 and then Silver Efex 2

Behind the scene

Here is a shot of behind the scene, the Camera is setup and I used a Tripod because of the Long Exposure but I suggest to use a Tripod when possible and always for HDR and Long Exposure.

Beach sand is soft so when I setup my Tripod, I push it down into the sand so its nice a secure. You want it to be steady and stable, as there will be wind and water which will try to move the Tripod so its always good to get it buried nicely into the sand.

Here is the end result…

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