THE DEADLY CAPTURE....

Whilst shooting on Avoca beach the other day, there was some reasonable cloud cover. Which if you usually read my posts, I usually carry on about how good it is to have a bit of cloud cover - 1. to create some drama and 2. to allow a long shoot, because the light stays reasonably neutral and not over exposed. This day was one of those days! After shooting on the beach, the light was still great so I ventured around the rocks to see what was new. On this day there was a bit of swell around and the water had obviously been washing up on the rocks considerably, because they were very wet and had a number of pools around.
One tip I would give (which is pretty obvious) is to watch and monitor what the ocean is doing - how often and where the water is rushing over the rocks. This is particular important if you want to get closer to the edge without getting washed out to sea. I was a little nervous at the point I shot this image because I thought I had misjudged the incoming sets, to the point of getting ultra wet, dropping my equipment, slipping on the wet rocks and being taken out to sea or all four. I stood frozen as the light rays spread from behind the cloud - creating something unusual and breathtaking. I watched as the area just beyond the foreground rock sucked dry and then the ocean began to engulf the rocky ledge. Once. Twice. And finally a third time, which was the largest. Like I said - I was frozen. Intent on making a unique image I held my ground and luckily the swell fell short of me. After checking the shot in camera, I took this as a bit of a warning and vacated the area for dryer ground and packed up for the day.

Upon reviewing the days shoot I was super stoked to see the result of my mornings work. Particularly, because I can still feel the feeling of accomplishment after setting yourself a goal and achieving it.

The Light, Avoca NSW © Josh Pitt

Seeya
Josh :)

I WAS BLINDED, BUT NOW I SEE...

...By the sky that is. Armed with a brand new set of Neutral Density graduated filters (AKA ND Grads), I set off to a location I had been to many times before, to test them out.
For those who are thinking "what the hell are you talking about!", let me give you a quick explanation.
Filters are either circular and screwed onto the lens or square/rectangle and in a specially affixed mount on the lens. There are many types of filters available today and what they are designed to do is - create effects, correct exposures and improve photos in general. The particular set I got are a series of tinted black to clear filters with varying intensities. What this helps to do, is to correct the exposure between the sky and foreground/subject. For example - when the sun rises, to a camera, the sky is a lot brighter than the foreground and needs help to expose everything correctly or as we would see it in real life. Cameras are similar to the human eye in many ways, but one thing it cannot do is compute multiple exposures in one scene. The human eye is so sophisicated it adjusts to the scene depending what we are focussed on. What this filter does is cuts out a % of light to a certain parts of the scene so it comes back into line with the fully exposed (or clear part of the filter).

In the image below I used the filters to tone down the sky so I could have the clouds visable (because they were very cool!) at the same time as the waves. I liked this shot because of the contrast water. Not in colour, but in movement. You'll notice many different things happening - to the right third of the image, the wash is almost frozen, whereas the the mid-bottom left a wave has broken right on the shore and catapulted towards me and drenched my socks you can also see the future breaks slowly moving towards the shore.

Seeya
Josh :) 

Rush, Avoca Beach NSW © Josh Pitt