Based upon the grey and dreary forecast for Sunday I decided gamble on hit and miss forecast the night before and head out.
I am always filled with anticipation heading out in the car to find out what the light will be like. For a long time, I would target arriving at my location in time for sunrise, I have since learned my lesson (where possible) to never miss blue hour.
As I began driving down Grouville hill past the parish hall the castle & horizon comes into view, and my anticipation turns to excitement, the horizon has red glow!!
Usually I have a coffee with me in the car, and when I arrived and parked next to Rhonda's cafe I saw the true colour in the sky. Its a strange situation, excitement at the great light, and trying to drink my coffee as quickly as I can without burning myself before grabbing my camera bag and tripod to head down the slip at just gone 7:10am. With sunrise at 7:38am, I was right in the middle of blue hour.
Waterproof boots are essential!!
As I arrived the tide had just started rising up the slip way. So using my 14 - 30 f4 S, I set my tripod up and framed up my composition with the cobbles in the foreground. Then timing my shots with the waves to get a balance between cobbles and wave with a 2 second timer.
Starting at f5.6 and ISO 160 giving me shutter speed around 1.5 - 3 seconds. Focusing on the pier, in the first shot and then on the slip way cobbles in the next gave me a two image stack.
I needed to move the tripod a few times as the tide crept in. After moving I decided to increase the ISO in order to give me a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds.
Very quickly the clouds moved far enough left that the glow gradually disappeared. I strolled down along the water front for the sunrise, but it greyed over very quickly leaving light that wasn't worth shooting.
A busy day meant that I wasn't able to do any editing until later in the evening. I wasn't disappointed!!
I didn't need to do much editing, I had two versions with differing foregrounds. With both, all I did was to dodge some of the waves to brighten them, correct the colour hue, vibrancy and saturation in the sky and burn some of the darker clouds to increase the mood.
Which version do you prefer?
Nikon Z7 - Nikkor Z 14 - 30mm f/4 S @ f/8.0 - 0.3 Seconds - ISO640
Nikon Z7 - Nikkor Z 14 - 30mm f/4 S @ f/8.0 - 0.3 Seconds - ISO640