Monday, November 16, 2009

Painting With Shutter Speeds

One of the challenges of photography is capturing light in that special way. Over the course of the last year, I have learned that creating a unique image can be a life long journey.

Natural Bridges, although only a few miles from my house, remains a challenge for me. There are only a couple windows of great light each year, typically mid fall and late winter. These windows are even smaller due to tide, well, and cloud cover.

Of course, I have the luxury of visiting it fairly frequently, but there are no guarantees. Last week, I took this photo. The tide was too high, and the sunset colors never really popped. I did notice that the swells were fairly decent sized and coming in at predictable intervals. I kept my shutter speed relatively quick (1/2 second for this shot) which froze the incoming waves. I really like these quicker shutter speeds; they seem to create wonderful brush strokes of texture and light. Painting with shutter speeds, so to speak.

Although not the epic shot I was looking for, I think it still stands as a place marker for that lifelong journey.

3 comments:

  1. Great shot. I fully endorse what you are saying. What I try to do with limited experience is to create a picture between a dreamscape and reality.

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  2. Hi, I love your works heare. I link your blog to my blog. Thank you for your inspirational images.

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  3. What a shot and journey! You have managed to do what most fail at with water shots. I'm not a hugh fan of fuzzy water but here it is totally in context. I also notice your perspective is far off in the distance to the right drawing the mind off the image. Then, I notice that the subject (the large rock) has the exact oposite angle pulling the eye back into the middle of the frame - genious! Thanks for sharing both your technical side and creative one Jim.

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