Making Waves

If I see another 10 Stop, dreamy, long exposure seascape I’m going to scream! It’s been done! Move on! Try something new!

Well this is the antidote to that, the anti-long exposure seascape.

From my last post (and if you have looked at any of my previous work on my website) you will see I photograph a lot with shallow depth of field. In fact I probably do it too much. At WOMAD I was playing with the 56mm wide open (F1.2) in the bright sun. I thought I needed to play with it more, to see what was possible, maybe I could use it in other circumstances, so, I did what I always do when I want to test and play, I headed to the beach. Of course it helps I live 2 minutes walk from the sea but it does mean I end up with far too many photographs of seaguls and kite-boarders (testing focus tracking) and seacapes (well, because thats where I live).

The tide was comming in and the waves were breaking quite nicely. Set the ISO to 400, Aperture Priority and F1.2.

Full frame:

1:1 Crop:

Look at the patterns, the droplets and overall the detail! I’ve of course photographed waves breaking at fast shutter speeds butnever this fast! The electronic shutter opens up new possiblites that was only possible using flash in the past. I’m sure that the speed effects themselves are going to add much to my day-to-day work in itself however the fact that I can now shoot wide open at almost any time without filters is a huge benefit.

As for the anti-long exposure seascape? I love something about this; just the single groyne post sharp. Even Classic-Chrome has it’s use sometimes….