Both myself and Valda were drawn initially to
the strangely coloured bubbles at the shoreline.
Thoughts drifted to the possible cause of the colour- pollution perhaps and if so, what from? Somehow
I couldn’t get an image I was happy with, having
tried both with and without camera movement,
so eventually I moved on.
While the day was generally quite stormy, with
a dark sky, we were treated to a magical silvery light
that lit up sections of the sea. I tried a variety of
techniques to capture it, including some ICM work.
Final images are rarely a one-off , rather they
are the culmination and conglomeration of many
smaller ideas along the way. While on occasion
you’re going to come away with a fi nished shot, the
‘scrapbook’ items are no less important, whether
they are created physically with the camera,
mentally in the psyche, snatched on a mobile,
sketched or exist as words written on paper.
I often like to try out new things in response to
my surroundings and today I had a go at combining
bokeh with handheld long exposures of the moving
water. It was much trickier than it sounds and I’d
be tempted to try this with a tripod on another
occasion. This did lead me down another, more
productive avenue, though.
A couple of years ago I did four days of intensive
astronomy training in order to become a ranger
for the Galloway Dark Sky Park and ever since I’ve
been drawn to abstract photographic compositions
redolent of the cosmos. This often involves playing
around with the exposure, so I found myself
capturing the highlights on the water and throwing
everything else into darkness, while exploring both
still and ICM captures.
Having recently made a conscious decision
to move away from the avenues I fi nd myself
repeatedly drawn down, at this juncture I forced
myself to try something a bit diff erent.
There was some murky foam with a greenish
hue, so I played with a couple of diff erent ideas,
combining the colour with some seaweed texture.
Following this, I spent some time experimenting
with the windbreaks on the beach, pondering their
use as protective barriers against the wind, but
also their role as demarcation lines, setting out
territories on the expanse of sand.
By the end of our time together I had taken 852
shots, working through each subject until I had
exhausted the possibilities or fallen out of the zone.
The biggest question is whether any of them will
make the cut?Morag’s st ory
In Morag’s bag
- Canon EOS 5D MkIII
- Canon EF 100-400mm
f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM - Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L
Macro IS USM - Canon EF 50mm f/2.5
Compact Macro - Lee ND grad fi lters
(hard and soft ; 0.3, 0.6, 0.9
and 1.2)
44 Outdoor Photograph February 2018Below
Canon EOS 5D MkIII with 100-400mm
lens at 263mm, ISO 100, 1/5sec at f/32
Opposite (top)
Canon EOS 5D MkIII with 100-400mm
lens at 400mm, ISO 100, 0.4sec at f/32
Opposite (below)
Canon EOS 5D MkIII with 100-400mm
lens at 400mm, ISO 100, 1/3sec at f/3643-47 Morag & Valda1_SW.indd 44 18/12/2017 15:20