dreaming with my eyes wide open, part iii / noon hour

I made this image about 2 weeks ago. As I left the house to run an errand, I noted how quickly the clouds were blowing across the sky. Made quick work of the chore, checked the tide table, picked up the gear, and headed to Carkeek (Park). This is one of the images that I recorded. It was made at about forty minutes past noon. In order to capture the movement in the sky and water, I used an extremely dark filter. I like the bit of surreality that the long exposure imparted on the scene. Our brains are just not programmed to expect/view daylight long exposure images like this.

dwmewo iii / noon hour

Photog Notes
This image was lit by heavy cloud-filtered sunlight. The camera was set at ISO 200, exposed for 30 seconds at f/16. In order to extend the shutter speed to the extreme that I wanted, I used a Lee Big Stopper (10x) neutral density filter. The Big Stopper is a great tool but it lets through so little light that it is nearly impossible to focus or accurately set exposure with the filter in place. I therefore set up the focus before inserting the filter. Exposure was a bit of trial-and-error; I determined the starting point by taking an unfiltered exposure and bumping that up by a 10-stop shutter/aperture combination. A big thank you to all the teachers who taught me to do simple mental arithmetic!

 

dreaming with my eyes wide open, part ii

I shot this at dusk a couple of evenings ago. It had been one of those clear, cloudless sunsets and even as twilight approached, there was a gorgeous orange-gold light in the sky. By this time, the water had taken on it’s twilight color but at the surface, the twinkling tones continued to dance…

tobacco-smoke

Photog Notes
Due to the extremely low light levels by this point, making this image was an exercise in finding just the right combination – of ISO to maintain image quality, of shutter speed to capture some motion while maintaining some sharpness, and of aperture to allow for an interesting depth of focus. I ended up using an ISO of 400; this image was shot at ¼ of a second at f/9.5.