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26.01.09

Photographing seaside settings

Words by Simon Stafford

I decided to visit Lyme Regis, in Dorset in mid-November, so began monitoring the weather forecast to find a promising day. The deckchairs may have been packed away and the ice cream vendors long gone, but so had the crowds! Apart from the locals and a few day-trippers it was all very quiet, which made getting there and finding a place to park very straightforward.

Since I expected to spend most of the day on my feet I didn’t weigh myself down with equipment. In addition to my camera I packed a couple of spare batteries, a handful of memory cards, lens cloth, remote release cable, polarizing and neutral density filters, and three lenses: wide-angle and telephoto zooms, which cover my most commonly used focal lengths, plus a 105mm macro lens for close-up shots. The final piece of kit was the most important of all – my tripod.

The wide-angle zoom is great when I want to emphasize an element in the foreground. Conversely, my 70-200mm telephoto-zoom is perfect for isolating details and flattening perspective to make subjects that are actually some distance apart appear much closer to each other. All too often it can be easy to be distracted by the ‘big view’ and allow small details to go unnoticed. My macro lens is invaluable in this situation, as it allows me to get in close and photograph the fine details often found in commonplace subjects to reveal interesting patterns and textures.

Probably the most appealing aspect of shooting pictures at this time of year is the quality of the light. Granted, the hours of daylight are much shorter, but the harsh, high-angled summer sun is replaced by a gentler sunlight that traces a lower arc through the sky, casting long, raking shadows even at midday.

It’s all too easy to become overwhelmed by the variety of picture possibilities; the trick is not to try to do too much, too quickly. Predict how the day will unfold and plan your time accordingly. For example, though local streets and promenades may be deserted early on, the harbour quayside will be a hive of activity as boats and their crews come and go.

Probably the single most useful filter I used here was my polarizer. Well known for its ability to deepen a blue sky, the polarizer will help in many other seaside situations by removing unwanted reflections from water and glass and increasing colour saturation. Another useful filter is the neutral density (ND) grad. If you’re out early to catch the pre-dawn light, the ND grad is invaluable to help control contrast. Digital camera users can adopt an alternative approach to photographing scenes with high contrast by shooting a sequence of bracketed exposures and combining them in layers, or dedicated High Dynamic Range (HDR) software.

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