I’ve just been down to Minehead in Somerset for a few days. The weather wasn’t too wonderful whilst I was there, being rather wet, windy and cloudy, but it was great for moody photography.
This is an early morning shot of the famous (infamous?) white roof of the Butlin’s holiday complex. It’s taken from Minehead Harbour with a telephoto lens. There were some nice dark clouds above it, which I have darkened a bit more to give the right sort of mood.
I made a trip to Dunster Beach just up the road from Minehead. It’s close to the medieval village of Dunster. Near Dunster there is a tower, Conygar Tower, on a small hill. I waited for a little break in the dark cloud so that the tower was silhouetted. A graduated Neutral Density filter darkened the sky at the top.
There is a cascade running on to Dunster Beach, and because it wasn’t sunny I was able to use a long shutter speed to show the movement of the water. The water runs down a a series of concrete steps and once again I used a long focal length lens. It gave some “perspective compression”, making the steps seem closer to each other than they are in practice. My EM-10’s IBIS (In-Body Image Stabilisation) allowed me to hand-hold with a long shutter speed, (1/20th of a second), to show the movement of the water, but to avoid camera shake. The overcast weather meant that the highlights in the water didn’t burn out.
For this last image I changed to a wide-angle lens, and dropped the camera down low. The EM-10’s tilting screen helped me get the composition right without me needing to lie on the ground, and the IBIS allowed a hand-held shutter speed of 1/10th of a second. I was intrigued by the water coming out underneath the top concrete layer. You can imagine that a few hard winters where ice gets in the cracks will loosen it even more.
The Moral? If the weather is a bit “mardy”, your images can be moody!
by Derek Gale