Sunday 14 June 2015

A dull sunset turned into a lesson in car photography

Myself and my friend Mark from Twiglet Images headed down to Kimmeridge Bay in #Dorset last night to hopefully shoot a lovely sunset involving the "Land" statue created by Sir Antony Gormley to mark the 50th anniversary of The Landmark Trust. 
The weather reports were looking perfect, patchy cloud with sunny intervals which could potentially crest some lovely colours in the sky. The tide was in our favour as well with low tide just after sunset. 
We had hoped that the clouds would break completely after sunset to allow us to capture the Milky Way...but the forecast wasn't playing ball with that part. 

When we were getting close to the village of Corfe Castle we saw a massive amount of pud coming from the direction of the sea so our hearts started to sink, thinking that all hopes of some sky at the cost were now squashed. When we arrived at Kimmeridge Bay we saw some clear sky but that the clouds were being formed right above the cliffs in the bay next to Kimmeridge. The wind coming off the sea was hitting the vertical cliffs and being pushed upwards where it condensed into heavy clouds...it was pretty spectacular to witness but it meant we weren't going to be able to catch the sun going down because of the angle of those clouds. 

Nevertheless, we clambered done the rocks towards the statue and set up our cameras to see what we could create with what nature was dealing us. 

I found a nice composition that I think works well, even if there was very little colour in the sky. What do you think of the picture below? 

When dusk was over we headed back up to the Clifton car park for a very welcome coffee from the flask I had brought with me. We then decided to turn the car around and play with some shots of that instead. Now, I have never tried any automotive photography before. I have admired the work of Tim Wallace from Ambient Life for quite some time but knew that I would NEVER be able to create anything near his quality of work...he is the master after all. 

We set up our cameras (my Canon 70F and Marks Nikon D600) on high tripods and set the intervalometers to take a succession of shots while we lit the car with a LED torch shone through a hand held softbox. 

This is my version...a composite of 25 shots all merged together. I'm quite pleased with it but I've obviously got a very long way to go. 

Whereas this last picture is Marks version...a 3-shot composite. 

I LOVE Marks version. 

The difference between my crop-sensor camera and his full-frame is quite evident. Wish I could afford to go full-frame! 

Until next time :-)