Storming

After an extended vacation from reality, it can take some time to get back into the swing of things. While on a family get away, I was fortunate to have some gloomy weather to shoot some black and white landscapes using long exposures. I’ve recently added a B + W 6 stop filter to stack with my 10 stop, giving me 16 stops of reduction. Why is this necessary you ask? Shooting with just a 10 Stop ND filter will be fine for most cases but lets say you had the sun above you around 4pm, even though this shot was taken while Tropical Storm Katia was riding up the Eastern Coast, I still had a lot of light coming into the lens. I find that exposure times of 3-4 minutes to be perfect for scenes like this and I don’t always want to shoot at f/22. So in order to shoot at a sharp aperture of say f/8, f/11 or even f/13, your letting more light into the lens but with 16 stops of reduction you can shoot at these apertures and still get long exposure times up to 4 minutes or longer.

During this shot the waves were crashing like mad into the pier and also the area in the foreground was creating a whirl which is where I decided to compose this shot. My tripod legs where likely a foot buried into the sand as the wind was blowing steady at a 90 degree angle. I noticed some camera shake but standing with my back turned to the wind in front of the camera took care of this extra shake. Give it a try next time your out shooting long exposures in stormy weather!