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waterfront

Shooting Reflected Light and Blue Hour

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The other day I knew there was a good chance of a spectacular sunset. The problem was I did not have time to get to a good place to shoot it so I had to make other plans. This got me thinking that if the sunset was strong enough there would be some reflected light of clouds near by to give me something to shoot. It turned out that this was the case as the sunset lit up everything around me.

Sandy Bay Sunset
Clouds show off an insane sunset further off to the west over Ipswich Bay. Fuji X-T3 w/10-24

Upper Granite Pier gave me a wonderful look over Sandy Bay and all I had to do was wait and see if the the clouds would reflect the light from the sunset over Ipswich Bay. I was not disappointed. The sunset was so crazy that it was a 360 degree light show.

Straightsmouth Light Sunset
Reflected sunset over Sandy Bay and Straightsmouth Island. Fuji X-T3 w/50-140

As soon as the light started to fade I rushed over to Back Beach to catch Blue Hour and the Rockport skyline lit up with lights from the Shalin Liu and Brackets Rest.

Blue Hour Rockport
The lights along the Rockport waterfront reflect on the water as Old Sloop stands guard. Fuji X-T3 w/50-140

The Blue Hour light was beautiful and the lights from the Shalin Liu and Brackets Rest. lit up the water along the shore line with intense reflections. The newly refurbished First Congregational Church of Rockport shines bright white in the low blue light. So don’t always shoot the sunset look for the reflected light around the horizon it could give you beautiful images! Blue Hour is a wonderful time of day and can also offer some great images.

Patience and Persistence in Landscape Photography

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Twin Lights moon
The Buck Moon rises next to the South Light on Thachers Island in July of 2019. Fuji X-T3 w/Fujinon 55-200 exp. ISO 400 1/13s @ f5.6. Luckily it was not real windy so the long shutter speed was fine. This is a fairly large crop from the original as I don’t have a lens longer than 300 (35mm terms).

A couple of the things that I preach with workshop attendees is that in most cases you will be rewarded when using patience and persistence. This image of the Buck Moon rising next to the South Light on Thacher’s Island is an image that required both. A friend had called a few days before reminding me of the Buck Moon and that it would be rising very close to sunset and that it would be rising between the the Twin Lights of Thacher’s Island in Rockport. As the appointed hour started to approach, which was at 8:21 PM, the clouds started to move in. What a real bummer it would be if the clouds blocked the moon. As the time approached I got even more apprehensive. Should I bother to go? Here is where the persistence came in. I decided to go and just see – who knows what will happen.

It still did not look promising as I walked up to our location on Eden Rd. From this location you can’t see the moon as it rises as the island blocks the horizon. I estimated that we would see the moon around ten minutes after it rose. So as we talked about the possibilities, the moon slowly poked out of the clouds and gave us a brief glimpse. So our patience paid off as we got about five minutes of shooting in before it rose into the clouds. It would show itself again later when it was dark but not near the lighthouses. The difficulty came with trying to time the red light on the lighthouse. I first counted how long it took to come around and once I figured that out it was just a matter of hitting the shutter a milli second before the light came around. So luck and skill were involved in making this image.

Others on social media have cheated and merged two images, one taken well before when it was obscured and another when it was well up in the sky. So in this case the image is not reality. The blending of two exposures to balance the dynamic range can make for a dramatic image. Unfortunately it produces images which are not a representation of reality. So I tend not to do them.

Therefore I give you this image which is and example of persistence and patience which is reality!.

Don’t let lousy weather keep you indoors

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During my workshops one of my mantras is practice. Always have a camera with you whether it be your phone, a good point and shoot or your regular camera. There is no excuse for not having one of them with you. Practicing looking for compositions should be something you enjoy doing whether you happen to make an image or not.

This week the weather report was awful – rain for the whole week. I was not looking forward to sitting in the house banging on the computer.

So on Monday with the drizzle and fog I headed out for a morning walk to see what I could find. It turns out I found quite a bit of interesting things to photograph.

 

Practicing hyperfocal distance is an art form. The Fuji system shows you a hperfocal distance scale with a blue bar that shows what’s in focus and what is not at every aperture. Very useful. Everything in this image is tack sharp front to back.

After I walked around the waterfront I managed to find some more great images along the way.

A person waiting in the fog for the bus with blooming jonquils.
A shop window filled with Rockport coffee mugs waiting to be sold.
An finally left over faux Easter flowers hanging out of a mail slot on a door.

When I got home and let my dog “Kodak” out it was still kind of drizzly and when he came back in he was a little soggy looking. I had the camera with me and I immediately thought I could get a great shot of him looking back out the door with some great background separation. B&W is quite often a great option for this type of photo.

Lousy weather is no excuse to not get out there and shoot. It just might be the opportunity you were looking for to capture a great image.