Saturday, 31 October 2009 15:33
Features
MSH3906 - The Minimalistic Vertoramic Seascape -
Two image 'Vertorama'.
Nikon D200. Sigma 10-20mm @ 12mm.
3 seconds @ f/16. ISO 100.
.9 [3 stop] Hitech ND Grad. Soft edged.
Shot in Manual.
Spot metered from the surf and sky to determine filter selection.
Custom White Balance applied in Adobe Camera RAW.
Shot this back on October 25th '09. Was a bit of a breezy evening; couldn't turn my camera into the wind without the lens getting absolutely plastered with sea spray. Canne remember how many times I cleaned the lens and filters that evening.
Was a shame, as the best light and colours were in the same direction as the on coming wind.
Another down side to the wind was the lashing I got from the waves.
On a few occasions they came over the top of my ankles and down into my boots. Was a bit chilly to say the least.
Hence why this shot was taken from a bit further back though I still managed to get wet, thus resulting in me shooting it as a 'vertorama'...
Yeah, I wondered what the hell one of them was too when I first heard about them. Turns out they're a thing you add to a title to get more hits on Flickr.
Its basically a panorama, but the consecutive shots are shot vertically, from bottom to top, or top to bottom, whichever floats your boat, instead of left to right or vice versa.
Technically speaking, its still a panorama, panorama literally means 'wide view'. But 'vertorama' sounds cool, and gets you views and faves, so why not.
Where you shooting from the bottom upwards, well I do anyways, using filters can be a pain, as you have to adjust it to rematch the horizon after you tilt the camera, without shifting the camera side to side.
Usually I'd bracket and blend the exposures, but as the waves were crashing pretty hard, there was no way of getting two matching shots, especially as I was at a 3 second exposure.
Bracketing down for the sky would have introduced another 1 second exposure, and as I set my camera to delay the taking of the exposure by .3 of a second, to reduce shake from the mirror slap, I'd have had a nearly 5 second burst going on. The wave that I initially shot would have receded and a new, different looking one would have replaced it. No blending there then. Filters it was.
I figured I'd need a .9 [3 stop] Neutral Density grad to hold back the afterglow of the sunset. I decided to go with a soft edge grad, which has a smoother transition from dark to clear, as I knew shooting quickly, I'd never be able to get a hard edged grad lined up properly. The soft edge gave me some leniency to play with when blending the exposures later.
I could have probably used a 1.2ND grad, as some of the sky, on the right hand side, still blew out a bit, but I would have lost the gorgeous glow left by the sunset.
I rattled off the first shot, which at 3 seconds, caught the wave breaking and retreating down the shingle beach.
Around the first groyne, the beach shelves off, which resulted in the large volume of churning water, which with the long exposure, turned smooth, but still held some detail.
I quickly tilted the camera up, and roughly adjusted the grad filter to recover the sky, and fired the second shot. This recorded some of the incoming waves, one of which soaked my feet, closer to the horizon, the silhouette of the Isle of Wights north coast, and the gorgeous after glow sky, with the half moon shining bright in the top left.
I was left with the two shots, _MSH3906 & _MSH3907.
Back in the safety and warmth of the office, the two RAW files were 'developed' in Adobe Camera RAW.
I didn't go over the top with them at that stage, my goal was to preserve as much detail and as many tones as possible.
These were then saved as 16bit .tif files.
In Adobe Bridge, I went to Tool > Photoshop > Photomerge. This opens Photoshop and loads the two files ready for merging.
I set the mode to 'Reposition Only'. This just lines up and blends the images, normally along the horizon in my experience.
This left me with a pretty big, rectangular image, with a lot of dead space.
I cropped to a square, aligning the bottom most groyne to intersect the bottom left power-point [using the rule of thirds].
I don't like to go too over the top with my editing, the same applied with this shot.
Using curves and levels, I boosted the colours that were already there. The evening light had left a sort of magenta cast on the foaming white water, so I countered that using Nik Effects 'White Neutralizer'.
Finishing with a bit of selective dodging and burning to add some extra mood to the water, and to hold the detail in the battered groynes, then a quick go over with the clone tool, to remove dust/sea spray spots, and a quick sharpen using the Unsharp Mask in Photoshop.
That pretty much covers it.
I hope you like the shot, I'm pleased with it.
And I hope the explanation of the process helps a bit. Any questions, fire away.
TTFN,
Matt.
<3
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