deviantART: gallery:andymumford/25238761

deviantART: gallery:andymumford/25238761 http://search.deviantart.com/?q=gallery:andymumford/25238761&section= deviantART RSS for gallery:andymumford/25238761 en-us Copyright 2013, deviantART.com Mon, 20 May 2013 06:36:48 PDT deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://st.deviantart.net/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png Embers http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Embers-185490911 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Embers-185490911 Mon, 08 Nov 2010 11:15:27 PST Embers nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2010-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

Almost exactly a year since I photographed this beach last time, I was in the south of Portugal again last weekend.

It had been a LONG TIME since I was out with my camera. A long time since I'd done any waterscapes, and on this weekend I had both the time and the inspiration to go out and shoot.....I just didn't know if the weather was going to help me out.

The first evening was grey and rainy, so I didn't even bother going out. The second day was promising, and I headed out to the coast, only to find 45mph winds coming off the ocean, and a huge cloud bank that ate the sun as it got close to the horizon. I did get one shot on that evening, but more than anything, I just had so much fun working the tripod, working the camera, and splashing about on the rocks.
The third and final night didn't look so promising, so I headed out to a location that I knew well and thought that I could get something from even if the sky was disappointing.

Well, as it turned out, the sky was brilliant, and I spent a happy hour there shooting. Again, it was very windy, which shook the tripod and sent lots of spray off the incoming tide. Long exposures were pretty much out, but I couldn't resist shooting one when the sky was at it's peak of colour.
As I said, the tide was coming in rather quickly, and Casteljo is a very flat beach. I wanted to shoot with this rock as a foreground feature, which meant waiting till the waves receded, running down the beach after the retreating wave, setting up, measuring exposure and filters, and then shooting before the incoming wave submerged everything again. I didn't have the time for a 30 second exposure, and didn't want to open the aperture wider than f9.5, so I shot at ISO400 to ensure I could get the image before the waves came back.

Sure enough, the shutter clicked shut at the end of the exposure just as the waves were coming back, so I picked the tripod up just as the water came round my legs, and walked back up the beach out the sea to check how the image had come out.

It was a lovely evening, and I think I'll be submitting at least two more shots from the same session.

Shot last year at the same beach:

Metadata

Taken at Praia do Castelejo, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400
15 secs | f9.5 | | ISO400 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. ]]> The Photo

Almost exactly a year since I photographed this beach last time, I was in the south of Portugal again last weekend.

It had been a LONG TIME since I was out with my camera. A long time since I'd done any waterscapes, and on this weekend I had both the time and the inspiration to go out and shoot.....I just didn't know if the weather was going to help me out.

The first evening was grey and rainy, so I didn't even bother going out. The second day was promising, and I headed out to the coast, only to find 45mph winds coming off the ocean, and a huge cloud bank that ate the sun as it got close to the horizon. I did get one shot on that evening, but more than anything, I just had so much fun working the tripod, working the camera, and splashing about on the rocks.
The third and final night didn't look so promising, so I headed out to a location that I knew well and thought that I could get something from even if the sky was disappointing.

Well, as it turned out, the sky was brilliant, and I spent a happy hour there shooting. Again, it was very windy, which shook the tripod and sent lots of spray off the incoming tide. Long exposures were pretty much out, but I couldn't resist shooting one when the sky was at it's peak of colour.
As I said, the tide was coming in rather quickly, and Casteljo is a very flat beach. I wanted to shoot with this rock as a foreground feature, which meant waiting till the waves receded, running down the beach after the retreating wave, setting up, measuring exposure and filters, and then shooting before the incoming wave submerged everything again. I didn't have the time for a 30 second exposure, and didn't want to open the aperture wider than f9.5, so I shot at ISO400 to ensure I could get the image before the waves came back.

Sure enough, the shutter clicked shut at the end of the exposure just as the waves were coming back, so I picked the tripod up just as the water came round my legs, and walked back up the beach out the sea to check how the image had come out.

It was a lovely evening, and I think I'll be submitting at least two more shots from the same session.

Shot last year at the same beach:

]]> Twist http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Twist-127918478 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Twist-127918478 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:01:04 PDT Twist nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2009-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

I know I know I've submitted a very similar shot to this before, (this one is taken from further up the beach and hasn't been cropped to a square) but I've always liked this version, and as I don't have much new to submit at the moment, I thought I'd put it in my gallery here so people can have a look at it.

I might move it into scraps later.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Amoreira, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Lee 0.6 (2 stop) glass ND
1.5 seconds | f22 | 10mm ]]> The Photo

I know I know I've submitted a very similar shot to this before, (this one is taken from further up the beach and hasn't been cropped to a square) but I've always liked this version, and as I don't have much new to submit at the moment, I thought I'd put it in my gallery here so people can have a look at it.

I might move it into scraps later.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Amoreira, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Lee 0.6 (2 stop) glass ND
1.5 seconds | f22 | 10mm

]]> Vicentina http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Vicentina-158843214 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Vicentina-158843214 Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:58:24 PDT Vicentina nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2010-2013 ~AndyMumford I'm off to Scotland this week, so here's a quick waterscape from my last session on the coast.

Metadata

Taken on Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.3 (3 stop) hard NDG
3 secs | f22 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

Same evening as:

]]> I'm off to Scotland this week, so here's a quick waterscape from my last session on the coast.

Metadata

Taken on Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.3 (3 stop) hard NDG
3 secs | f22 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

Same evening as:

]]> Carrapateira http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Carrapateira-165172323 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Carrapateira-165172323 Mon, 24 May 2010 12:10:28 PDT Carrapateira nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2010-2013 ~AndyMumford
I didn't really have much time to find an interesting composition, and only managed to shoot two frames before the sun disappeared for the rest of the day.

Metadata

Taken near Carrapateira, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Hoya ND400 9 stop ND | Lee 0.9 3 stop hard grad |
30 secs | f13 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Resize for web PS CS3

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. ]]>
I didn't really have much time to find an interesting composition, and only managed to shoot two frames before the sun disappeared for the rest of the day.

Metadata

Taken near Carrapateira, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Hoya ND400 9 stop ND | Lee 0.9 3 stop hard grad |
30 secs | f13 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Resize for web PS CS3

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

]]> Cordoama http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Cordoama-150878891 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Cordoama-150878891 Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:50:52 PST Cordoama nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2010-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

Taken on Praia da Cordoama on the south western coast of Portugal in November.
The shot is nothing special, I'd used the best light of the day shooting another composition, but I loved the black rocks here and wanted to see if I could build a composition around them.
The vast majority of coastal waterscapes feature water flowing around rocks in the foreground, but here I wanted to concentrate more on the rock forms and the receding cliffs.

As soon as it stops raining in Portugal (it's been solid for a month now in Portugal, I think I'm about to grow some gills) I'll be back down here trying to shoot the beach better.

Metadata

Taken at Praia do Cordoama, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400
30 secs | f9.5 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. ]]> The Photo

Taken on Praia da Cordoama on the south western coast of Portugal in November.
The shot is nothing special, I'd used the best light of the day shooting another composition, but I loved the black rocks here and wanted to see if I could build a composition around them.
The vast majority of coastal waterscapes feature water flowing around rocks in the foreground, but here I wanted to concentrate more on the rock forms and the receding cliffs.

As soon as it stops raining in Portugal (it's been solid for a month now in Portugal, I think I'm about to grow some gills) I'll be back down here trying to shoot the beach better.

Metadata

Taken at Praia do Cordoama, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400
30 secs | f9.5 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

]]> West http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/West-155045146 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/West-155045146 Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:10:36 PST West nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2010-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

Another beach I've been trying to photograph for over a year now, this place really is fantastic.
At high tide, there is no beach, at low tide the rocks continue for ever out to sea. Shooting when the tide is coming in would be fatal, as there's no where to go, so it had to be when the tide was going out. I would have loved to get out onto those tramlines of rocks you can see in the distance, but the waves sweeping over them were pretty aggressive, and it really wouldn't have been a good idea.

Lots of spray in the air, so half the shots were unusable because of spray on the filters. I kept switching between soft and hard grads so I could keep shooting and cleaning filters at the same time. When I wasn't shooting, just composing, I kept a 2 stop NDG over the front of the camera...set up the shot, removed the filter (leaving just the 3 stop that I needed to keep the sky in check) took the photograph, and then replaced the filter again to try to keep the spray off.

This particular beach is pretty much inaccessible, the only way down to the beach is to go along gullies made by rain water and the occasional slick sheets of rock. Getting in was tricky, but getting out again was pretty scary. A storm came in from the Atlantic, and the high winds and rain were pretty intense (basically the same weather that's been doing all the damage in Madeira this last week). There's no cellphone coverage at all, and climbing back up was hard work. About two thirds of the way up I realised I'd followed the wrong gully and was at the bottom of an almost sheer slope of rock and shale about 5 meters below the ledge I wanted to be on. The light was almost gone, and I didn't want to go all the way back down to find the right path again in the dark. It would have been dangerous, and there was no guarantee I'd have found the gully I wanted anyway. So I tried to climb up to the ledge, and just kept sliding back down in the loose shale.
I was getting pretty tired, the waves were crashing into the cliff below me, the rain was almost horizontal and it was pretty dark. I started to think of all the statistics I'd heard of fishermen disappearing from these cliffs every year, and succeeded in scaring myself enough to really push myself up the slope...pulling out plants and getting all manner of cuts on my hands in the process.
So I got up to the ledge, sat down and gulped in mouthfuls of air and just looked out at the ocean, now being illuminated by lightening...Heart pumping, chest heaving, feeling really alive. I'm pretty sure studio photographers never get this kind of buzz...

Metadata

Taken on Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.3 (3 stop) hard NDG | Lee 0.6 (2 stop) glass ND
3 secs | f22 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. ]]> The Photo

Another beach I've been trying to photograph for over a year now, this place really is fantastic.
At high tide, there is no beach, at low tide the rocks continue for ever out to sea. Shooting when the tide is coming in would be fatal, as there's no where to go, so it had to be when the tide was going out. I would have loved to get out onto those tramlines of rocks you can see in the distance, but the waves sweeping over them were pretty aggressive, and it really wouldn't have been a good idea.

Lots of spray in the air, so half the shots were unusable because of spray on the filters. I kept switching between soft and hard grads so I could keep shooting and cleaning filters at the same time. When I wasn't shooting, just composing, I kept a 2 stop NDG over the front of the camera...set up the shot, removed the filter (leaving just the 3 stop that I needed to keep the sky in check) took the photograph, and then replaced the filter again to try to keep the spray off.

This particular beach is pretty much inaccessible, the only way down to the beach is to go along gullies made by rain water and the occasional slick sheets of rock. Getting in was tricky, but getting out again was pretty scary. A storm came in from the Atlantic, and the high winds and rain were pretty intense (basically the same weather that's been doing all the damage in Madeira this last week). There's no cellphone coverage at all, and climbing back up was hard work. About two thirds of the way up I realised I'd followed the wrong gully and was at the bottom of an almost sheer slope of rock and shale about 5 meters below the ledge I wanted to be on. The light was almost gone, and I didn't want to go all the way back down to find the right path again in the dark. It would have been dangerous, and there was no guarantee I'd have found the gully I wanted anyway. So I tried to climb up to the ledge, and just kept sliding back down in the loose shale.
I was getting pretty tired, the waves were crashing into the cliff below me, the rain was almost horizontal and it was pretty dark. I started to think of all the statistics I'd heard of fishermen disappearing from these cliffs every year, and succeeded in scaring myself enough to really push myself up the slope...pulling out plants and getting all manner of cuts on my hands in the process.
So I got up to the ledge, sat down and gulped in mouthfuls of air and just looked out at the ocean, now being illuminated by lightening...Heart pumping, chest heaving, feeling really alive. I'm pretty sure studio photographers never get this kind of buzz...

Metadata

Taken on Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.3 (3 stop) hard NDG | Lee 0.6 (2 stop) glass ND
3 secs | f22 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

]]> Purple http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Purple-155855896 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Purple-155855896 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:22:14 PST Purple nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2010-2013 ~AndyMumford My 100th deviation submission!

The Photo

Another shot from the session I did the other week on the South West coast of Portugal. This was the last shot of the night, 30 minutes after the sun had set...and I'm amazed it worked out to be honest..there was so much spray in the air that I didn't think it was worth trying anything longer than a couple of seconds.

Metadata

Taken on Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.3 (3 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400 (9 stop)
80 secs | f8 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. ]]> My 100th deviation submission!

The Photo

Another shot from the session I did the other week on the South West coast of Portugal. This was the last shot of the night, 30 minutes after the sun had set...and I'm amazed it worked out to be honest..there was so much spray in the air that I didn't think it was worth trying anything longer than a couple of seconds.

Metadata

Taken on Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.3 (3 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400 (9 stop)
80 secs | f8 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

]]> Subtraction http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Subtraction-49885865 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Subtraction-49885865 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 04:01:34 PST Subtraction nonadult photography/nature/landscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2007-2013 ~AndyMumford Subtract all that is distracting and unnecessary until only the essential remains."

_______________________________

This is a resubmission of a piece from February because I've had a request for a square crop version for a print.
Funnily enough I resisted doing this as a square crop at the time, but I've changed my mind about it now. It seems that Phil was right all along.
Sorry for doubting you mate

In the original version I reduced the colour temperature, and for this version I've restored it to give the warmth back to the image. I've also tweaked the contrast in Curves.

Please note, this view no longer exists. I returned to this location a month after shooting this and the hill now has an ugly steel pylon perched on top of it. The whole of this beautiful landscape has been covered with pylons stringing cables between them.

It makes me sad. I do landscape photography because I love the landscape, and every time we lose some of the world's wild places, we lose them for good.
Shame.

_______________________________

I was in the south of Portugal recently, and as we were driving along the Atlantic coast we stopped on top of a hill to take in the view. It was a cloudy and windy day which created shadows of the clouds racing across the countryside, throwing parts of the landscape briefly into light, and then back into shadow.

There wasn't really anything to create foreground interest in a shot, and I'm wary of taking shots like this - they can just look too "full" of landscape. So I tried a different composition, picked out the hill and waited / hoped for the shadows made by the clouds to move enough to illuminate only the top of the hill for a few seconds.....

Taken near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal

1/125 | f6 | -0.3 exp.comp. | 10mm | Hoya polarizer
Colour hue in Aperture. Curves, luminosity, re-sizing and frame in PS. ]]> Subtract all that is distracting and unnecessary until only the essential remains."

_______________________________

This is a resubmission of a piece from February because I've had a request for a square crop version for a print.
Funnily enough I resisted doing this as a square crop at the time, but I've changed my mind about it now. It seems that Phil was right all along.
Sorry for doubting you mate

]]> Still Re-editted http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Still-Re-editted-62980472 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Still-Re-editted-62980472 Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:49:38 PDT Still Re-editted nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2007-2013 ~AndyMumford I'm going through some of older shots in my gallery and re-editing them. On this shot I've removed the noise from the sky, cleaned a few dust spots, boosted the mid-tone contrast and given it better sharpening. It's now how I wanted it to be when I first edited it a year and a half ago.
Apologies to people who've seen it before.

Location

This was shot in Lagos, in Southern Portugal on a recent photography trip there.

I went primarily to shoot sunrises, and on a couple of the days I was blessed with some beautiful cloud formations and colour in the sky.
This particular shot was taken on the 3rd dawn, and the sky stubbornly refused to co-operate, staying clear all night and throughout the morning.

I decided to try to work something different to the other days by getting some extremely long exposures to smooth out the ocean and try to give it the same texture as the the sky.

Technique

This shot was taken a few minutes after the sun had risen above the horizon, I shot facing south along the beach as the sun's first rays were illuminating the cliff face with beautiful warm light, really bringing out the red in the rock.

I was standing in the water with my tripod on the rocks that are visible just below the water line in the foreground. The waves were very small, and I was hoping that the long exposure would make the sea more glass-like than misty (which is what would have happened with a rough ocean).

I wanted to shoot at around f8 or f9, as the lens really performs better in the middle of it's aperture range. The spot meter reading came from the cliffs and I used that as my mid tone value, setting the shutter speed accordingly.
I composed the shot (because I knew I wouldn't be able to see through the viewfinder with all the filters on) and zoomed in to 12mm to avoid vignetting.

I first added a polarizer to reduce the reflection bouncing off the water, and then I put on the 10-stop neutral density filter. Then I tried to put the grad filter on that would hold back the sky's exposure and stop it from blowing out the highlights there.
This was tricky because I couldn't see through the viewfinder and I had to turn the filters at an angle to get them to run along the top of the rocks. If they were too low, the rocks would be darkened and lose the warm light, too high and there would be a big white gap between the top of the rocks and the part of the sky covered by the filter.

The only way to do it was trial and error really, so I took a shot, adjusted the filter, took another, moved it again, until I was happy with the results on the LCD screen.

Finally I set a proper exposure by opening the shutter 12 more stops (the polarizer is 2 stop and the ND is 10 stop) 10 stops gave me 30 seconds, so I estimated the extra 2 stops needed would be around 2 minutes.

I used the remote shutter release to open the shutter, timed 2 minutes, closed the shutter...and waited to see what the LCD would show me

Notice on the beach there's the ghost of a person (another photographer as it happens) who was moving around the beach during the time the exposure was made.

Post Capture

Again, I'm trying more and more to avoid doing any post capture work at all (because I'm pretty lazy when it comes to sitting infront of a computer playing with photos) and this has had nothing changed to it apart from cloning a few sensor dust spots, adding the frame and title, re-sizing and very subtle sharpening.
Colour temperature was set in camera at 6100K and everything else, the colour, contrast and saturation is exactly how it came out on the RAW file.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Camilo, Lagos, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon cable release
Hoya Pro1 Polarizer | Hoya ND400 | Lee 0.9 Hard ND grad (3 stop)
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
125 seconds | f9 | 6100k

Workflow in Apple Aperture ]]> I'm going through some of older shots in my gallery and re-editing them. On this shot I've removed the noise from the sky, cleaned a few dust spots, boosted the mid-tone contrast and given it better sharpening. It's now how I wanted it to be when I first edited it a year and a half ago.
Apologies to people who've seen it before.

Location

This was shot in Lagos, in Southern Portugal on a recent photography trip there.

I went primarily to shoot sunrises, and on a couple of the days I was blessed with some beautiful cloud formations and colour in the sky.
This particular shot was taken on the 3rd dawn, and the sky stubbornly refused to co-operate, staying clear all night and throughout the morning.

I decided to try to work something different to the other days by getting some extremely long exposures to smooth out the ocean and try to give it the same texture as the the sky.

Technique

This shot was taken a few minutes after the sun had risen above the horizon, I shot facing south along the beach as the sun's first rays were illuminating the cliff face with beautiful warm light, really bringing out the red in the rock.

I was standing in the water with my tripod on the rocks that are visible just below the water line in the foreground. The waves were very small, and I was hoping that the long exposure would make the sea more glass-like than misty (which is what would have happened with a rough ocean).

I wanted to shoot at around f8 or f9, as the lens really performs better in the middle of it's aperture range. The spot meter reading came from the cliffs and I used that as my mid tone value, setting the shutter speed accordingly.
I composed the shot (because I knew I wouldn't be able to see through the viewfinder with all the filters on) and zoomed in to 12mm to avoid vignetting.

I first added a polarizer to reduce the reflection bouncing off the water, and then I put on the 10-stop neutral density filter. Then I tried to put the grad filter on that would hold back the sky's exposure and stop it from blowing out the highlights there.
This was tricky because I couldn't see through the viewfinder and I had to turn the filters at an angle to get them to run along the top of the rocks. If they were too low, the rocks would be darkened and lose the warm light, too high and there would be a big white gap between the top of the rocks and the part of the sky covered by the filter.

The only way to do it was trial and error really, so I took a shot, adjusted the filter, took another, moved it again, until I was happy with the results on the LCD screen.

Finally I set a proper exposure by opening the shutter 12 more stops (the polarizer is 2 stop and the ND is 10 stop) 10 stops gave me 30 seconds, so I estimated the extra 2 stops needed would be around 2 minutes.

I used the remote shutter release to open the shutter, timed 2 minutes, closed the shutter...and waited to see what the LCD would show me

]]> Catch The Breeze http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Catch-The-Breeze-63982974 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Catch-The-Breeze-63982974 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:59:44 PDT Catch The Breeze nonadult photography/nature/other AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2007-2013 ~AndyMumford Location

I wanted to submit something a little different from my usual waterscapes, so here's something different taken on the same trip to Southern Portugal as my recent submissions.

I've always been fascinated by these places, and for me they don't disrupt the environment or landscape at all. Instead I think they actually add something indefinable to the countryside, although I know there are plenty of people who disagree with me.

I'd wanted to shoot a wind turbine for a while now, and I've seen some fantastic takes on this subject here on dA. I'd never had the right light or skies before, but on this particular day I was heading out to the coast to shoot the sunset (unsuccessfully as it happened) and was driving through the countryside in the extreme south-west of Portugal.
The countryside is pretty wild and harsh here, the winds are very strong as you get closer to the coast you stop seeing many signs of human habitation.

But scattered across the hills are these wind turbines, and on this particular evening with the sun low in the sky and some cloud behind them, they looked particularly impressive.
Driving into the site, I expected to be stopped or something, but there's no-one there, just row after row of these sentinals.
They make a particular low humming noise, and the lack of people in the place gives quite a powerful atmosphere to the area.

As it happens, Portugal is one of the leading countries in the EU when it comes to renewable energy sources, [link] and this wind-farm (which is much more vast than you can see from this shot) is just one of the many scattered thoughout the country.

Technique

The evening light did most of the work for me with this shot. I didn't want to freeze the propellers, but I also didn't want to blur them completely so that they disappeared, so I set the camera up on a tripod and set the shutter speed at 1/5 of a second.
I took my spot meter reading from the blue of the sky and set the aperture accordingly (I'd have preferred to have a more open aperture, but this would have meant a faster shutter speed, losing the blur of the propellers).
I used a polarizer to saturate the sky and clouds more, as well as enhance the light on the turbine towers, and then took a few shots with the cable release.

I've always liked the letterbox format of panoramic cameras like the Hasselblad X Pan, and I framed this shot with that in mind, cropping off the top of the nearest tower.

Post Capture

I cropped the shot into a letterbox format by cropping off the foreground. I couldn't get the 2x1 ratio I wanted as I had to crop a little off the left hand side where there was a telegraph pole that ruined balance.

I adjusted the contrast a little bit, pushing it higher to bring out the light more, as well as tweaking the white balance by an additional 500k

Metadata

Taken near Carrapateira, West Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon cable release
Hoya Pro 1 polarizer
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
1/5s | f22 | 18mm | 5100k

Full workflow in Apple Aperture (contrast, white balance, resizing and sharpening) ]]> Location

I wanted to submit something a little different from my usual waterscapes, so here's something different taken on the same trip to Southern Portugal as my recent submissions.

I've always been fascinated by these places, and for me they don't disrupt the environment or landscape at all. Instead I think they actually add something indefinable to the countryside, although I know there are plenty of people who disagree with me.

I'd wanted to shoot a wind turbine for a while now, and I've seen some fantastic takes on this subject here on dA. I'd never had the right light or skies before, but on this particular day I was heading out to the coast to shoot the sunset (unsuccessfully as it happened) and was driving through the countryside in the extreme south-west of Portugal.
The countryside is pretty wild and harsh here, the winds are very strong as you get closer to the coast you stop seeing many signs of human habitation.

But scattered across the hills are these wind turbines, and on this particular evening with the sun low in the sky and some cloud behind them, they looked particularly impressive.
Driving into the site, I expected to be stopped or something, but there's no-one there, just row after row of these sentinals.
They make a particular low humming noise, and the lack of people in the place gives quite a powerful atmosphere to the area.

As it happens, Portugal is one of the leading countries in the EU when it comes to renewable energy sources, [link] and this wind-farm (which is much more vast than you can see from this shot) is just one of the many scattered thoughout the country.

Technique

The evening light did most of the work for me with this shot. I didn't want to freeze the propellers, but I also didn't want to blur them completely so that they disappeared, so I set the camera up on a tripod and set the shutter speed at 1/5 of a second.
I took my spot meter reading from the blue of the sky and set the aperture accordingly (I'd have preferred to have a more open aperture, but this would have meant a faster shutter speed, losing the blur of the propellers).
I used a polarizer to saturate the sky and clouds more, as well as enhance the light on the turbine towers, and then took a few shots with the cable release.

I've always liked the letterbox format of panoramic cameras like the Hasselblad X Pan, and I framed this shot with that in mind, cropping off the top of the nearest tower.

Post Capture

I cropped the shot into a letterbox format by cropping off the foreground. I couldn't get the 2x1 ratio I wanted as I had to crop a little off the left hand side where there was a telegraph pole that ruined balance.

I adjusted the contrast a little bit, pushing it higher to bring out the light more, as well as tweaking the white balance by an additional 500k

Metadata

Taken near Carrapateira, West Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon cable release
Hoya Pro 1 polarizer
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
1/5s | f22 | 18mm | 5100k

Full workflow in Apple Aperture (contrast, white balance, resizing and sharpening)

]]> Daybreak http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Daybreak-66811614 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Daybreak-66811614 Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:08:48 PDT Daybreak nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2007-2013 ~AndyMumford Location

Another piece from my trip to Lagos in Algarve, southern Portugal. I’ve submitted a landscape version of this sunrise, and normally I don’t like submitting two similar shots taken in the same session, but partly because I’ve simply not had time to get out with my camera much recently, and partly because I do still enjoy the portrait version of this shot, I thought I’d submit it.
I hope no-one minds too much, I will have some new stuff to submit soon (I hope…

Technique

I love water (I’m sure most people had guessed by now) and love photographing it’s movement, so one of the first things I look for when I’m shooting a waterscape is something that is going to give the water an interesting shape as it flows around it. Rocks are great for this, as well as providing great texture and interest in the foreground, and wet rocks are even better as they reflect the light beautifully.
So I found a place that had rocks just below the water line which were being revealed as the tide receded backwards and then covered again as the waves came in.
This often involves standing in the water with the tripod, and as the water can move the legs of the tripod, it’s better to wedge them against rocks if possible, rather than in soft sand.
One thing I’ve learned here through painful experience is the value of decent footwear when paddling around in the water. I used to wear flip flips, but they have no grips on wet rocks, and can often be pulled off by the tide. I’ve cut my feet up pretty badly on rocks, and almost lost my camera to the water becauses I’ve slipped, so now I’ve learned that if I’m going to wear sandels then they have to be ones that fit all around the foot securely and grip extremely well.

The previous shot I submitted from this morning was taken moments before the sun came over the horizon. This shot was taken a few moments after the sun had cleared the horizon line, so the brightness range was very wide.
I took a spot meter reading from the rocks to give me my mid-tone (base exposure). I wanted to capture movement in the water with a shutter speed of a couple of seconds, so I had to close the aperture down to around f20.

The sky however metered at around 10 stops brighter than this base exposure, which meant that it would be hopelessly blown out highlights and I suspected that it wasn't possible to get a shot. I used two 3 stop neutral density graduated filters, laying them along the horizon to try to bring the sky back to within the range of the camera's sensor.
However, in the moments that it had taken me to meter the sky and put the filters on, the sun had grown more intense and this was the only shot I managed before it no longer became viable to shoot into the light.

I'm aware that technically this shot isn't correctly exposed, the highlights have blown out...but somehow on this photo I don't actually mind too much....the brightness tells me the story of the rising sun, of the dawn of a new day and the beautiful cleansing warmth of the early morning sun.

The final step in making the exposure was waiting for the water to recede away from me, which revealed the rocks below the surface and gave the water the leading lines.

Post Processing

I try to get as much correct in camera as I can, as I'm not really a big fan of sitting infront of the computer tweaking images.
This was shot in RAW, and in processing I've cleaned a few water drops that were on the filter, pushed colour saturation a tiny bit, pushed the contrast a tiny bit and applied a little sharpening.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Camilo, Lagos, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Cokin ND8 (3 stop) soft GND
3 seconds | f20 | 10mm

RAW workflow in Apple Aperture (contrast, saturation and sharpening). ]]> Location

Another piece from my trip to Lagos in Algarve, southern Portugal. I’ve submitted a landscape version of this sunrise, and normally I don’t like submitting two similar shots taken in the same session, but partly because I’ve simply not had time to get out with my camera much recently, and partly because I do still enjoy the portrait version of this shot, I thought I’d submit it.
I hope no-one minds too much, I will have some new stuff to submit soon (I hope…

]]> Everything http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Everything-88943969 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Everything-88943969 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:13:30 PDT Everything nonadult photography/nature/landscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2008-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

This isn’t the kind of image I’d normally submit to DA, so I guess that’s why I’m submitting it.
I shoot quite a lot, and only a small percentage of my works ends up in my DA gallery.
When it comes to choosing which image to submit, I’ve realized that there are images that I consider “DA style images” which will fit into my gallery here.
Other images go onto my own website, and get exhibited, but never get submitted here, so I thought I’d give one of them a chance here.

I chose this image for a couple of reasons:
It’s taken in a part of southern Portugal where my wife and I are planning to move to, and this shot was taken from around 100 meters up the hill from where the house is. The project we’re working on there is everything I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, and being able to live in such a beautiful area is a dream I’ve had for a long time.

Every time we go there, I try to get a shot from this hill, and this was taken back in March, just before the sunset.
It’s a location I’ve got the rest of my life to get right, both sunrise and sunset, so consider this a work in progress.

The other reason is that recently this particular image has sold quite a few prints locally, so I wondered how it would get on here.

To be honest, I really don’t expect this to be a popular DA image, it looks far better as a print than it does on the web.

I’ve got a number of panoramic format landscapes which I may submit sometime in the future, so this may be the first in a loose series of 3:1 ratio shots.

Technique

This is only a tiny portion of the view from the side of the road, which runs around the side of the hills facing south.
I was playing around with the telephoto lens trying to isolate patterns of the light and shade of the hills, and compressing perspective with the telephoto.

It’s quite windy up there, so I didn’t attempt to do this handheld, and besides, I prefer working with a tripod, I actually find it easier to compose as a tripod slows me down.

I isolated parts of the scene through the viewfinder, and as the sky was brighter, filtered the sky with a 2 stop ND graduate filter with a soft graduation placed along the distant hills.

I really love panoramic format images (not stitched panoramas, I’m a little too lazy to do that) with a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 and often shoot landscapes with the intention of cropping the top and bottom off like this. The eye moves through an image like this in a different way, so not everything works as a “letterbox” composition, but I thought this scene was suited to it.
So I framed this with the part I was interested in right across the middle, which gave me more latitude to crop from both top and bottom, and also meant that I’d be removing the corner from the image, which on my lens are usually quite soft.

As I said, I used a tripod to keep the camera steady, and a cable release to trip the shutter without nudging the camera. It’s a low contrast scene so I relied on the camera’s matrix meter for the reading, dialing in -.5 of a stop compensation as I thought that slightly underexposing would give me more contrast between the shadow parts of the hill and the lit parts.
I set the white balance at 6500K manually to enhance the orange glow from the dusk.

Post Processing

This is prettymuch as it came out of the camera apart from the cropping. I enhanced mid-tone contrast a little, tweaked vibrancy and that’s it.
The original RAW file was sharpened, and then after the image had been resized, it was sharpened again for the web, using the Lightness channel in Lab Colour mode.

Metadata

Taken near Marmelete, Monchique, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Nikkor 18-200VR | Nikon cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (2 stop) soft GND
1/15s | f8 | 52mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture. Title in PS CS ]]> The Photo

This isn’t the kind of image I’d normally submit to DA, so I guess that’s why I’m submitting it.
I shoot quite a lot, and only a small percentage of my works ends up in my DA gallery.
When it comes to choosing which image to submit, I’ve realized that there are images that I consider “DA style images” which will fit into my gallery here.
Other images go onto my own website, and get exhibited, but never get submitted here, so I thought I’d give one of them a chance here.

I chose this image for a couple of reasons:
It’s taken in a part of southern Portugal where my wife and I are planning to move to, and this shot was taken from around 100 meters up the hill from where the house is. The project we’re working on there is everything I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, and being able to live in such a beautiful area is a dream I’ve had for a long time.

Every time we go there, I try to get a shot from this hill, and this was taken back in March, just before the sunset.
It’s a location I’ve got the rest of my life to get right, both sunrise and sunset, so consider this a work in progress.

The other reason is that recently this particular image has sold quite a few prints locally, so I wondered how it would get on here.

To be honest, I really don’t expect this to be a popular DA image, it looks far better as a print than it does on the web.

I’ve got a number of panoramic format landscapes which I may submit sometime in the future, so this may be the first in a loose series of 3:1 ratio shots.

Technique

This is only a tiny portion of the view from the side of the road, which runs around the side of the hills facing south.
I was playing around with the telephoto lens trying to isolate patterns of the light and shade of the hills, and compressing perspective with the telephoto.

It’s quite windy up there, so I didn’t attempt to do this handheld, and besides, I prefer working with a tripod, I actually find it easier to compose as a tripod slows me down.

I isolated parts of the scene through the viewfinder, and as the sky was brighter, filtered the sky with a 2 stop ND graduate filter with a soft graduation placed along the distant hills.

I really love panoramic format images (not stitched panoramas, I’m a little too lazy to do that) with a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 and often shoot landscapes with the intention of cropping the top and bottom off like this. The eye moves through an image like this in a different way, so not everything works as a “letterbox” composition, but I thought this scene was suited to it.
So I framed this with the part I was interested in right across the middle, which gave me more latitude to crop from both top and bottom, and also meant that I’d be removing the corner from the image, which on my lens are usually quite soft.

As I said, I used a tripod to keep the camera steady, and a cable release to trip the shutter without nudging the camera. It’s a low contrast scene so I relied on the camera’s matrix meter for the reading, dialing in -.5 of a stop compensation as I thought that slightly underexposing would give me more contrast between the shadow parts of the hill and the lit parts.
I set the white balance at 6500K manually to enhance the orange glow from the dusk.

Post Processing

This is prettymuch as it came out of the camera apart from the cropping. I enhanced mid-tone contrast a little, tweaked vibrancy and that’s it.
The original RAW file was sharpened, and then after the image had been resized, it was sharpened again for the web, using the Lightness channel in Lab Colour mode.

Metadata

Taken near Marmelete, Monchique, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Nikkor 18-200VR | Nikon cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (2 stop) soft GND
1/15s | f8 | 52mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture. Title in PS CS

]]> Beneath http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Beneath-103291863 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Beneath-103291863 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:59:45 PST Beneath nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2008-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

The southern coast of Portugal’s Algarve is incredibly touristed….there are some great beaches there, but most of them are surrounded by ugly hotels and marinas, the kind of thing we call “development”
Fortunately, the west coast of Algarve is much wilder and unspoilt….not so “developed”.
The Atlantic ocean is really rough there, and it gets incredibly windy making it relatively unattractive for mass tourism. The government has declared it a National Park as well, which limits the amount of development in the area.
It’s really beautiful coastline, rugged, windswept and sometimes the landscape is almost lunar-like. While it’s only 30km away from the over-built centers of Lagos and Portimao, it’s a million miles away in how it feels.

My wife and I are moving to the area in a couple of years, and the 50 or so kilometers of coastline here is somewhere I’m really looking forward to spending my time photographing.
Every time we go to Algarve, we head out to the west coast to explore the coast there, and in October for the first time there was some cloud and drama in the sky.

On this particular day, the tide was incredibly low, and the rocks you see here are very rarely exposed (I was there again last weekend, and the tide was 100m further up the beach, completely covering these rocks, even though the tide was nowhere near it’s highest).
Consequently, the rocks are covered in barnacles and all kinds of growth so that it’s almost impossible to see the rock itself beneath the life that clings to it.
Walking out to this location was a pretty “crunchy” experience, but I couldn’t resist shooting the rocks like this…I wonder how long it will be till the ocean reveals them to me again.

If anyone’s interested, this was taken on the same day and same location that I took this [link]

Technique

I did a number of compositions, but I particularly wanted to build one around a stream of water flowing beneath the camera. I spread the legs of the tripod as wide as they would go so they could span the gap that the waves were washing up between the rocks. This way, there was less chance of the water causing the tripod to move.
I measured the exposure from the rocks using the spot meter, and then reduced the exposure by half a stop. I then measured the brightness of the sky, and put a 3 stop hard grad neutral density in place to bring the sky into the exposure latitude of the camera. Because the sun was mostly obscured by clouds, I could shoot straight into it even while it was relatively high in the sky without worrying about flare or the sky being too bright.
However, I wasn’t satisfied with the results as the water’s movement didn’t fit with how I wanted the scene to look. I added a 9 stop ND filter to allow me to use longer exposures, and then added the 9 stops to the exposure settings of the camera to give me the same level of exposure, just with a much longer shutter time.
The ND filter allowed me to get a 30 second exposure at f8.
I then just waited for a wave to crash into the rock flow up the gap towards me before opening the shutter with a cable release.

For more information on using filter for long exposure, have a look at this article here [link]

Post Processing

Very little was done to the image in post processing. Firstly I changed the colour temperature to around 5800k. I’d shot at 6700k, which was a little too warm, and the shot felt a little yellow.
I pulled the highlights in (where the sun was reflecting on the water) and then opened the shot in Photoshop.
Here I just gave a boost to the mid-tone contrast using Unsharp Mask, before resizing and sharpening for the web.

Please note, the rocks were covered in tiny white pebbles which may appear as halos from over sharpening in the final shot. They’re not halos and are present in the orginal insharpened RAW file.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Monte Clerigo, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Hoya ND400
30 seconds | f8 | 10mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and PS ]]> The Photo

The southern coast of Portugal’s Algarve is incredibly touristed….there are some great beaches there, but most of them are surrounded by ugly hotels and marinas, the kind of thing we call “development”
Fortunately, the west coast of Algarve is much wilder and unspoilt….not so “developed”.
The Atlantic ocean is really rough there, and it gets incredibly windy making it relatively unattractive for mass tourism. The government has declared it a National Park as well, which limits the amount of development in the area.
It’s really beautiful coastline, rugged, windswept and sometimes the landscape is almost lunar-like. While it’s only 30km away from the over-built centers of Lagos and Portimao, it’s a million miles away in how it feels.

My wife and I are moving to the area in a couple of years, and the 50 or so kilometers of coastline here is somewhere I’m really looking forward to spending my time photographing.
Every time we go to Algarve, we head out to the west coast to explore the coast there, and in October for the first time there was some cloud and drama in the sky.

On this particular day, the tide was incredibly low, and the rocks you see here are very rarely exposed (I was there again last weekend, and the tide was 100m further up the beach, completely covering these rocks, even though the tide was nowhere near it’s highest).
Consequently, the rocks are covered in barnacles and all kinds of growth so that it’s almost impossible to see the rock itself beneath the life that clings to it.
Walking out to this location was a pretty “crunchy” experience, but I couldn’t resist shooting the rocks like this…I wonder how long it will be till the ocean reveals them to me again.

If anyone’s interested, this was taken on the same day and same location that I took this [link]

Technique

I did a number of compositions, but I particularly wanted to build one around a stream of water flowing beneath the camera. I spread the legs of the tripod as wide as they would go so they could span the gap that the waves were washing up between the rocks. This way, there was less chance of the water causing the tripod to move.
I measured the exposure from the rocks using the spot meter, and then reduced the exposure by half a stop. I then measured the brightness of the sky, and put a 3 stop hard grad neutral density in place to bring the sky into the exposure latitude of the camera. Because the sun was mostly obscured by clouds, I could shoot straight into it even while it was relatively high in the sky without worrying about flare or the sky being too bright.
However, I wasn’t satisfied with the results as the water’s movement didn’t fit with how I wanted the scene to look. I added a 9 stop ND filter to allow me to use longer exposures, and then added the 9 stops to the exposure settings of the camera to give me the same level of exposure, just with a much longer shutter time.
The ND filter allowed me to get a 30 second exposure at f8.
I then just waited for a wave to crash into the rock flow up the gap towards me before opening the shutter with a cable release.

For more information on using filter for long exposure, have a look at this article here [link]

Post Processing

Very little was done to the image in post processing. Firstly I changed the colour temperature to around 5800k. I’d shot at 6700k, which was a little too warm, and the shot felt a little yellow.
I pulled the highlights in (where the sun was reflecting on the water) and then opened the shot in Photoshop.
Here I just gave a boost to the mid-tone contrast using Unsharp Mask, before resizing and sharpening for the web.

Please note, the rocks were covered in tiny white pebbles which may appear as halos from over sharpening in the final shot. They’re not halos and are present in the orginal insharpened RAW file.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Monte Clerigo, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Hoya ND400
30 seconds | f8 | 10mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and PS

]]> November http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/November-104411918 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/November-104411918 Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:08:45 PST November nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2008-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

This is my new favourite beach on Portugal's south west coast.
I was down there a few weeks ago exploring the coastline on an evening when the light and the sky were particularly fine.

It's a beautiful place, one I'll be returning to again and again over the next couple of years, so you'll be seeing more from here, and probably more from this session.
It was a lovely evening...the kind where you can't resist doing "just one more shot" and I worked my way along this line of rocks, gradually getting wetter and wetter.....good, heavy duty sandals are great for this kind of thing..

As it turned out, this was the last time I ever went out shooting with my D80, so it's kind of the camera's swan-song.

Technique

It was the moss on the rocks facing the light that caught my eye when I was looking for elements to build a composition around, and the pink cloud that the wind was slowly twisting into a corkscrew shape.

I wanted a shutter speed of around a second, as the water was moving relatively slowly, and I wanted a little blur, but still plenty of shape and definition in the water.
The sun hadn't quite set, so I used a Lee 2 stop glass ND filter, combined with a small aperture, to get the shutter speed I wanted.

The sky was around 5 stops brighter than my base exposure, so I used a 3 stop Lee ND graduated filter to reduce the exposure there and ensure plenty of colour and contrast.

For this shot I had the tripod in the water with two of the legs wedged behind small rocks to prevent the waves from moving it during the exposure. I timed shots by taking one exposure as the wave was rising up the beach, one when the water was at it's peak, and another as it receded using a cable release.

Post Processing

First of all I cropped the shot into a square. It was originally landscape format, but the water to the left and rocks to the right didn't add anything at all to the composition.
I increased the colour temperature a little, as it was a little blue, and then made subtle adjustments to the vibrancy, colour and levels of the RAW file.
After that, the shot was exported into Photoshop, where it was sharpened and resized for the web.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Amoreira, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Lee 0.6 (2 stop) glass ND
1.5 seconds | f22 | 10mm ]]> The Photo

This is my new favourite beach on Portugal's south west coast.
I was down there a few weeks ago exploring the coastline on an evening when the light and the sky were particularly fine.

It's a beautiful place, one I'll be returning to again and again over the next couple of years, so you'll be seeing more from here, and probably more from this session.
It was a lovely evening...the kind where you can't resist doing "just one more shot" and I worked my way along this line of rocks, gradually getting wetter and wetter.....good, heavy duty sandals are great for this kind of thing..

As it turned out, this was the last time I ever went out shooting with my D80, so it's kind of the camera's swan-song.

Technique

It was the moss on the rocks facing the light that caught my eye when I was looking for elements to build a composition around, and the pink cloud that the wind was slowly twisting into a corkscrew shape.

I wanted a shutter speed of around a second, as the water was moving relatively slowly, and I wanted a little blur, but still plenty of shape and definition in the water.
The sun hadn't quite set, so I used a Lee 2 stop glass ND filter, combined with a small aperture, to get the shutter speed I wanted.

The sky was around 5 stops brighter than my base exposure, so I used a 3 stop Lee ND graduated filter to reduce the exposure there and ensure plenty of colour and contrast.

For this shot I had the tripod in the water with two of the legs wedged behind small rocks to prevent the waves from moving it during the exposure. I timed shots by taking one exposure as the wave was rising up the beach, one when the water was at it's peak, and another as it receded using a cable release.

Post Processing

First of all I cropped the shot into a square. It was originally landscape format, but the water to the left and rocks to the right didn't add anything at all to the composition.
I increased the colour temperature a little, as it was a little blue, and then made subtle adjustments to the vibrancy, colour and levels of the RAW file.
After that, the shot was exported into Photoshop, where it was sharpened and resized for the web.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Amoreira, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND | Lee 0.6 (2 stop) glass ND
1.5 seconds | f22 | 10mm

]]> Flow http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Flow-105320494 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Flow-105320494 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:04:17 PST Flow nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2008-2013 ~AndyMumford To make it beautiful to live”

Go With The Flow – Queens of the Stone Age

The Photo

Another shot taken from the same session in south west Portugal that I took my last submission [link]
This was the last shot I took before packing up, by this point I was pretty wet and cold as I’d been standing up to my knees in the Atlantic for 30 minutes.
It was a beautiful evening though, the kind when I feel really lucky to have taken up photography, really lucky to be standing there with nothing else filling my mind but the sky and waves and the ocean infront of me.
When it’s like this, then it really feels like a blessing just to be out there.

The Photo

I spent the session working my way along the rocks, building compositions around the different rocks and trying to capture the movement of the water over and between them.
For exposure, I took a reading from the lit part of the rocks, and then a reading from the sky, to see how much filtering I needed.
For more information on how I measure exposure for graduated filters, have a look at this article here [link]
I used a 3 stop neutral density filter to balance the exposure of the sky and the foreground, and a tripod wedged between the rocks to ensure that the camera didn’t move as the waves moved around the legs.

Post Processing

Minor adjustments to the vibrancy, colour and levels of the RAW file before exporting into Photoshop CS3, where it was sharpened and resized for the web.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Amoreira, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND
1 second | f11 | 10mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and Photoshop CS3 ]]> To make it beautiful to live”

Go With The Flow – Queens of the Stone Age

The Photo

Another shot taken from the same session in south west Portugal that I took my last submission [link]
This was the last shot I took before packing up, by this point I was pretty wet and cold as I’d been standing up to my knees in the Atlantic for 30 minutes.
It was a beautiful evening though, the kind when I feel really lucky to have taken up photography, really lucky to be standing there with nothing else filling my mind but the sky and waves and the ocean infront of me.
When it’s like this, then it really feels like a blessing just to be out there.

The Photo

I spent the session working my way along the rocks, building compositions around the different rocks and trying to capture the movement of the water over and between them.
For exposure, I took a reading from the lit part of the rocks, and then a reading from the sky, to see how much filtering I needed.
For more information on how I measure exposure for graduated filters, have a look at this article here [link]
I used a 3 stop neutral density filter to balance the exposure of the sky and the foreground, and a tripod wedged between the rocks to ensure that the camera didn’t move as the waves moved around the legs.

Post Processing

Minor adjustments to the vibrancy, colour and levels of the RAW file before exporting into Photoshop CS3, where it was sharpened and resized for the web.

Metadata

Taken on Praia do Amoreira, Costa Vicentina, near Aljezur, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND
1 second | f11 | 10mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and Photoshop CS3

]]> Winter's Water Colours http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Winter-s-Water-Colours-106328946 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Winter-s-Water-Colours-106328946 Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:30:35 PST Winter's Water Colours nonadult photography/nature/landscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2008-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

Something a little different.

This shot was taken in a really heavy rainstorm. I was taking shelter and having lunch, but could see the rain and the water in the air creating a separation between the different hills in the serra.
This scene was a long way away, and only a tiny portion of the landscape that I could see infront of me. The telephoto lens has compressed the hills to such an extent that the foreground trees are perhaps 3 km away from me, whilst the tress in the mid-ground are around 7 km away
I don't expect this to get much attention here on DA, it's just not that kind of shot, but I'm happy with it. I really enjoy shooting more "intimate" landscapes with a telephoto lens and the possibilties for composition that come with this kind of focal length. In this case, I wanted to create a shot that really felt like a water colour painting, and captured the slightly colourless feel of the landscape in a rainstorm.

Technique

Conditions were changing so fast, and it was raining so hard that I didn't have time for the tripod.
I used the lens hood to keep water off the front element, and handheld the camera. I opened up the aperture to keep the shutter time down, and turned on the VR to help keep the shot steady and sharp.
With the zoom fully extended I looked around the landscape, looking for arrangements that would give me as many receding layers as possible, and also hopefully have some sort of focal point to anchor the shot (in this case the two lone trees on the hillside).

Location [link]

Post Processing

Shot in RAW, I just cropped a little off the bottom to make the trees there less of a solid block, and to try to balance them with the others hills in the distance.
Resized and sharpened for the web.

Metadata

Taken near Casais, Serra do Monchique Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 80-400 VR ED
1/125 second | f5.6 | 400mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and Photoshop CS3 ]]> The Photo

Something a little different.

This shot was taken in a really heavy rainstorm. I was taking shelter and having lunch, but could see the rain and the water in the air creating a separation between the different hills in the serra.
This scene was a long way away, and only a tiny portion of the landscape that I could see infront of me. The telephoto lens has compressed the hills to such an extent that the foreground trees are perhaps 3 km away from me, whilst the tress in the mid-ground are around 7 km away
I don't expect this to get much attention here on DA, it's just not that kind of shot, but I'm happy with it. I really enjoy shooting more "intimate" landscapes with a telephoto lens and the possibilties for composition that come with this kind of focal length. In this case, I wanted to create a shot that really felt like a water colour painting, and captured the slightly colourless feel of the landscape in a rainstorm.

Technique

Conditions were changing so fast, and it was raining so hard that I didn't have time for the tripod.
I used the lens hood to keep water off the front element, and handheld the camera. I opened up the aperture to keep the shutter time down, and turned on the VR to help keep the shot steady and sharp.
With the zoom fully extended I looked around the landscape, looking for arrangements that would give me as many receding layers as possible, and also hopefully have some sort of focal point to anchor the shot (in this case the two lone trees on the hillside).

Location [link]

Post Processing

Shot in RAW, I just cropped a little off the bottom to make the trees there less of a solid block, and to try to balance them with the others hills in the distance.
Resized and sharpened for the web.

Metadata

Taken near Casais, Serra do Monchique Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 80-400 VR ED
1/125 second | f5.6 | 400mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and Photoshop CS3

]]> No Memory http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/No-Memory-114639728 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/No-Memory-114639728 Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:06:38 PST No Memory nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2009-2013 ~AndyMumford Location

I was in Algarve, southern Portugal last weekend, and on one of the evenings managed to get over to the west coast, which has some of the most beautiful and unspoilt beaches in the country. I've shot here on this coast on a couple of occasions [link] [link] [link] and [link] were all taken in the area. It's a wonderful stretch of coastline and one that I intend to spend the next couple of years exploring and shooting.
On this particular evening I was walking along the cliff tops and saw that the tide had revealed these rock formations. Getting down to the beach was another matter...the cliff was pretty steep and there was no path, so it was a case of scrambling down loose shale until I was at the bottom, knowing that I was going to have to climb up again in the darkness.

Still, it was a great evening...I haven't shot waterscapes like this for over months now, not since I bought the D3 infact, and although the shots aren't great, I had a lot of fun shooting them

The Photo

I spent a lot of time composing around the rocks, which made almost parallel tramlines running out to the sea which finished in the curves you can see at the end of the line of rocks.
Sadly however, that part of the sky wasn't particularly interesting, so I changed angle to include the colourful cloud formation and have the lines moving diagonally across the frame.

I metered from the rocks, and used a 3 stop hard graduated ND filter to control the highlights in the sky. I also used a 2 stop glass ND filter so give me a longer shutter time to blur the waves motion.

For more information on using filters, have a look here [link]

Metadata

Taken near Monte Clerigo, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 17-35 f2.8 ED
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 ND | Lee 0.9 GND (hard)
15 seconds | f11 | 19mm

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. Sadly, I no longer have time to reply to individual comments, but I do appreciate people taking the time to look.
Any questions, please note me. ]]> Location

I was in Algarve, southern Portugal last weekend, and on one of the evenings managed to get over to the west coast, which has some of the most beautiful and unspoilt beaches in the country. I've shot here on this coast on a couple of occasions [link] [link] [link] and [link] were all taken in the area. It's a wonderful stretch of coastline and one that I intend to spend the next couple of years exploring and shooting.
On this particular evening I was walking along the cliff tops and saw that the tide had revealed these rock formations. Getting down to the beach was another matter...the cliff was pretty steep and there was no path, so it was a case of scrambling down loose shale until I was at the bottom, knowing that I was going to have to climb up again in the darkness.

Still, it was a great evening...I haven't shot waterscapes like this for over months now, not since I bought the D3 infact, and although the shots aren't great, I had a lot of fun shooting them

]]> Castelejo http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Castelejo-144531848 http://andymumford.deviantart.com/art/Castelejo-144531848 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:01:09 PST Castelejo nonadult photography/nature/waterscapes AndyMumford http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/a/n/andymumford.gif Copyright 2009-2013 ~AndyMumford The Photo

The south western coast of Portugal is one of the most beautiful parts of the country. Much of it is protected, so there's almost no tourism development there, and the beaches are generally windy and exposed to wild seas, as well as being a little off the beaten track. This makes them ideal for photography as there are few crowds, and they have some stunning cliffs and rocks.

I've been slowly trying to build up a portfolio of this part of the coast for the last 18 months, but this particular beach has proven difficult to get a shot of that I'm happy with. Last weekend was the fifth time I've been there since the summer of 08, and every time the conditions have been crap: No cloud, too much cloud, rain etc.

Finally, last weekend I got there and everything came together. The light and sky were glorious, there were large breaks of cloud on the horizon giving me strong sidelight and turning the rocks red, and the tide was on it's way out, leaving glistening reflections behind.

I haven't been shooting many waterscapes over the last year, to be honest, my heart hasn't really been in it after doing so many of them the year before, but this was a wonderful evening. The kind of session when it all seems easy, compose, shoot. Compose again, shoot again, solidly for 45 minutes until all the colour had drained from the sky.

I used a 2 stop ND grad filter to keep the sky and it's reflection at the same brightness, and a 9 stop ND filter to give me the long shutter time.

Next weekend I'll be in that part of Portugal again, so hopefully I'll get conditions as nice as this.

Metadata

Taken at Praia do Castelejo, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400
30 secs | f16 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. ]]> The Photo

The south western coast of Portugal is one of the most beautiful parts of the country. Much of it is protected, so there's almost no tourism development there, and the beaches are generally windy and exposed to wild seas, as well as being a little off the beaten track. This makes them ideal for photography as there are few crowds, and they have some stunning cliffs and rocks.

I've been slowly trying to build up a portfolio of this part of the coast for the last 18 months, but this particular beach has proven difficult to get a shot of that I'm happy with. Last weekend was the fifth time I've been there since the summer of 08, and every time the conditions have been crap: No cloud, too much cloud, rain etc.

Finally, last weekend I got there and everything came together. The light and sky were glorious, there were large breaks of cloud on the horizon giving me strong sidelight and turning the rocks red, and the tide was on it's way out, leaving glistening reflections behind.

I haven't been shooting many waterscapes over the last year, to be honest, my heart hasn't really been in it after doing so many of them the year before, but this was a wonderful evening. The kind of session when it all seems easy, compose, shoot. Compose again, shoot again, solidly for 45 minutes until all the colour had drained from the sky.

I used a 2 stop ND grad filter to keep the sky and it's reflection at the same brightness, and a 9 stop ND filter to give me the long shutter time.

Next weekend I'll be in that part of Portugal again, so hopefully I'll get conditions as nice as this.

Metadata

Taken at Praia do Castelejo, Costa Vicentina, Algarve, Portugal
Nikon D3 w/ Nikkor 17-35mm 2.8
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard NDG | Hoya ND400
30 secs | f16 | 17mm

Workflow in Nikon Capture NX2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves.

]]>