Last Light part 2

Last month I shared a post entitled 'Last Light'. It was quite an emotive piece, written just after the tragic loss of four airmen in a helicopter accident at Cley-Next-The-Sea. I felt the photograph summed up my feelings and the mood of the coast on that chill January evening pretty well. You can access the post here.

http://brettgardnerphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/last-light.html

Visiting the site at Burnham Overy Staithe some six weeks later revealed a completely different side to this sleepy little hamlet. Gone were the somber colours and cold Westerly winds, replaced now by beautiful oranges, dazzling yellows and bird song floating on a warm, gentle early Spring breeze. The sunset this time was fantastic and I knew I would have to let the sun sink towards the horizon if I were to expose the scene correctly. A three stop ND filter just about held back the powerful low sun and the resulting image conveys a sense of peace, tranquility and a certain warmth. Something that was definitely missing during the dark days of January.

Sunset at Burnham Overy Staithe

Tranquility

The last week has seen a real change in the weather at last, and it feels like Spring is just around the corner. This means I've been able to get out and about with my camera gear and take some coastal landscapes along the North Norfolk coast. We'd had a beautiful sunset last weekend and for once the wind had dropped to little more than a whisper. Burnham Overy Staithe was so peaceful as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon and everything became still, save the usual activity of the resident waders and gulls who were industrially going about their business, bills in the mud and tails in the air.

I spied one boat, gently bobbing away on the water, slightly silhouetted against the setting sun. It looked like the perfect shot so I set up the tripod and camera, attached the necessary filter and waited for the right moment before pressing the cable release. Once I was satisfied that I'd captured the image, I stood there for several minutes, taking in the beautiful surroundings, before finally packing up my gear and heading back towards the car.  The resulting image, I hope, conveys a sense of tranquility and warmth, hopefully a sign of things to come.

A tranquil scene at Burnham Overy Staithe

Cley Windmill

Starting at the beginning of the week I've been working on a project photographing the refurbishment of the beautiful windmill at Cley-Next-The-Sea. The owners wanted the work documented from start to finish, capturing the key moments in pictorial form. The project is set to last three weeks with both the fan tail and sails being replaced within this time. This is a major undertaking and the last time the windmill at Cley had such work carried out was during the mid eighties. I had already taken a before image just before the job was set to commence showing quite clearly the damage the sails and fan tail had sustained over the many years of hostile weather, so it's been a case of capturing the important moments as they've happened.

Work is well under way!

The crane used to lower the old supports down from the top of the tower and deliver the new structure back up is quite a bit of machinery and when at full height, managed to dwarf even the windmill. So far the job is about 50% completed and in a couple of weeks I should hopefully have a finished project to write about, showing in pictorial form the fascinating stages of this restoration project.... Stay tuned.

Brancaster Staithe

My second image from Brancaster Staithe and another scene I stumbled across by chance. I was just about to pack up my gear for the day and walk back to the car when the light changed, becoming beautiful, warm and soft. I started to see things differently and a cute little composition comprising two small boats filled with various objects against a backdrop of the harbour area caught my eye. I love detail shots like this. They offer a different viewpoint and perspective to the more traditional 'vista' landscape shot and when displayed alongside them at exhibitions, can compliment them rather nicely.

I photographed this with my now typical setup. Nikon D4, Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8, tripod and cable release and a set of ND grad filters.

Boats at Brancaster Staithe in Norfolk

Lone Wolf

I haven't photographed much in the way of nature and wildlife for a few years, working more recently on Weddings and now Landscape images. I really enjoyed it though, photographing in and around the Nature Reserves of Lincolnshire. I concentrated on butterflies and dragonflies in the main, utilising the rather superb Nikkor 105mm F2.8 macro lens mounted to my Nikon D200. Occasionaly I would venture further afield, sometimes to a zoo or wildlife park and this image of a Grey/Gray wolf was taken at one such park in Aviemore, Scotland, in the heart of the beautiful and rugged Cairngorms Mountain range. The enclosure is one of the biggest in Europe and it afforded some very impressive views of these majestic creatures. I always try and capture as natural an image as I possibly can, avoiding fences and wires wherever possible. I had watched the wolves for about 30 minutes and noticed that occasionally they would stop and stand on a small hillock, staring down towards the viewing enclosure where I was set up, Nikon D200 with Sigma 120-300m F2.8 all ready and attached to a sturdy Manfrotto tripod. It was cold, snow had been falling throughout the morning and I was getting a bit fidgety, standing still in the rather exposed and blowy vantage point. Finally a wolf willingly obliged and stood in the perfect position, staring down towards me, a backdrop of tangled branches and snow. I just had time to fire off a couple of shots before he decided he had had enough and trotted off.

The image has been quite successful for me, selling amongst others to a National newspaper and art poster site. It's one of those iconic pictures you quite often see of a lone wolf, a rather haunting depiction of such a beautiful animal, and one we need to protect at all costs.

Beautiful Lone Wolf

Lobster Pots

Brancaster Staithe is only about ten miles or so from my base in Wells-Next-The-Sea and it's a delightful drive along a narrow and twisty coastal road, with beautiful views offered at every turn. I had visited the little hamlet previously on a couple of occasions and the light had been flat both times, no matter how lovely the place looked there just wasn't a shot to be had. My latest visit however gave promise to much better weather. A nice calm evening with lovely warm pink tones to the sky and a few interesting subjects to capture. You can't really photograph coastal images without at least one of them containing lobster pots. I stumbled upon this lovely little scene crammed with pots, buckets, a boat and a discarded tyre acting as an anchor. The way everything was positioned led the eye nicely to the creek beyond and the lovely warm twilight sky. It was a simple shot with the Nikon D4 and Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8, utilising a tripod, mirror lock up and cable release. I used a 3 stop ND grad filter to hold back the sky while exposing for the foreground. Reviewing the image on the back of the camera left me a bit non plussed and I very nearly deleted it there and then. It was only when I got back home and downloaded the image onto the computer that I realised how much I actually liked it. I find it quite calming and now I can finally relax... I've eventually captured the lobster pot shot.  

Lobster Pots

Zenit TTL

The fifth camera in the 12 Months of film series is the Russian made Zenit TTL. Bought for £12 at a car boot sale, I have been shooting with this camera throughout January and its certainly been an interesting and problematic experience. The first problem I encountered concerned the light meter and the fact that it didn't work at all. The battery it requires is somewhat obscure and the one purchased based on a forum article didn't fit. I managed to get round this problem by using a free light meter mobile app called, (rather imaginatively) 'LightMeter', which as it turns out did the job rather well. The second problem concerned the lens which I have to say was a bit of a Frankenstein's monster. A previous owner had what looked like, taken a hacksaw to the back of the lens and cut into it thus allowing it to attach to this particularly camera body. It was a clunky setup to say the least and one that meant shooting with it was painfully slow at times. I'm not sure many photographers will be using this type of camera/lens combo at the Sotchi games this Winter, not in a professional capacity anyway.     

Having said that, I rather enjoyed shooting with this relic of the cold war era. It's typically Russian. By that I mean it's not particularly comfortable to hold, angular, and all the lumps and bumps seem to be in just the wrong place making it quite fiddly to get a nice firm grip. The max shutter speed was only 1/500th second, something that could potentially cause problems in the middle of the Summer, but thankfully wasn't an issue at all in January's gloomy light here in the U.K. Everything was rather basic, especially compared to a modern DSLR, but that's part of it's charm as with other film cameras, and the reason why many people are choosing this medium again. The Zenit TTL is very well made, metal body and knobs. It certainly puts many modern cameras to shame in this department and it's nice to see that some manufactures have responded to this by releasing beautifully made, retro styled modern digital cameras which hark back to this era. Fuji, I'm looking at you, the X-T1 looks lovely. The shutter makes a very satisfying clunk when fired, everybody around you will know you've just taken a picture and there's no stealthy quiet mode. But the beauty of this camera is that there are no frills, no fuss, it just gets on with the job at hand and I'm sure will continue to do so for many years to come. Now if you will excuse me, I'm off to scour the internet for one of these elusive batteries. Wish me luck.      

The Zenit TTL

Looking down on the asa, shutter speed and counter dials

Clean looking design

Shutter button and control dials

Really pleased with how the shots turned out, a few lovely light leaks creeping in here and there. The cabin in the woods shot looks decidedly spooky, just a shame it wasn't ramshackled and decaying.

Bruce

Cabin in the Woods

Brancaster Overy Staithe

Fungi

Rope

Seal viewing trips

Weybourne Beach at Sunset

Following on from my last post I decided to revisit Weybourne and attempt to capture the beach vista looking West along the coast with the tractor and boat as a focal point. To do this was going to be tricky as the last image I took was a close up of the machines shot at about 28 mm on a full frame DSLR. This is about as wide as I can shoot with the Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8 as it vignettes a bit at 24 mm with P series ND filters attached. I wanted to keep the machinery in the same position so the only option to me and one I had been thinking about since the last visit was a multi stitch panorama. I thought about the problems I might face on the day and set about preparing a shooting plan. The actual stitch in theory seemed easy but with the machinery and lobster pot only about six feet in front of the camera and the rest of the image disappearing off into the distance, I knew things wouldn't be quite that straight forward. I don't own a panoramic head which would have allowed me to shoot around the nodal point of the lens thus eliminating much of the distortion that I knew may creep into the final stitched image. All I could do was to keep the camera as level as possible and hope that the distortion wasn't too major. The other issue I faced was trying to hold back the brightness of the sky while exposing for the foreground. A three stop ND Grad was used to do this but it meant cutting through the boat and tractor on the right hand side of the image. I figured the best way round this problem was to shoot two images of the machinery, one with a filter, one without, and simply blend them together. This worked a treat. The stitch went well in Photoshop and I was able to use the vast majority of the finished photograph which was made up of three separate images. The real beauty of producing a panorama is that I now have a large file which I can print to a really impressive size if I so wish, something that couldn't quite be achieved using an ultra wide angle lens and the same composition.

Weybourne Beach at sunset