Holidays are the best times to explore and photograph new places.
Here's a shot of Rainbow Beach, just a stone's throw where we holidayed (in Gold Coast) just.
This is the EXIF: 16mm (as wide as you can go); ISO100 (native ISO, for the cleanest pictures); F16 (I always start with F16 in landscape shots); 446s (yes, that is more than 7 minutes).
Here's how its done.
Firstly, the key is composition. Take your time, look around, and find a composition that you like.
So I liked the dramatic clouds, foreground interests (big boulders). I decided not to go rule of thirds, and just shot the horizon at the middle, because I wasn't sure which I liked more - sky or boulders. In long exposures, the clouds are important, they are the paint brushes for the shot. But the foreground interest is the stability in the picture, that adds great contrasts. So I kept both.
Side note, shooting with the tripod in the sea - is difficult. I tried quite a few, but coz of waves, it ends up not tack sharp/blur. So I had to navigate through the boulders to find a spot for my tripod - stable enough, away from waves, and a decent composition.
Take your time.
So this is the first shot, without the ND filter. F16; 16mm; ISO100; 0.8s.
I love the ND filter, ever since I solved my light leakage problem, I was confident again in using this. A recap - this filter takes out 499/500 of the light hitting the camera sensor.
So if the shot above is 0.8s, with the filter, it should be 0.8 times 500 = 400 (or 6 min 40s). As the sun was setting, light was dropping - I let it go open for a bit more.
This is what I got.
I got this strange purple hue at the bottom right (the picture is already slightly corrected, but couldn't get rid of this) - so what I did was to convert it to Black and White - and you get the picture right on top.
So the ND filter smoothens out the water, giving you that milky tranquil feel. The clouds become your paint brush. It really is a trial and error process, you never really know what you are going to get. But if you don't try it, you won't know.
Also, with a 7 minute shot, you don't get many chances at this.
There you go. Keep shooting!
