Weekly commted photo #10 - Wild and peaceful

Wild and peaceful - Le Pradet

If you look at my seascapes, you will easily notice that most of the photos where done on the same place named "Bau Rouge beach".

Why ?

I really love wild and natural places and to sand beaches i prefer rocks with nice shapes and where the waves can break nicely.

Such places where really rare in the part of Provence where i lived and where all was done for a comfortable tourism.

Bau Rouge beach was one of them and so i went there really often.
I think that many photographers know this feeling : You always think you can return and capture some other light, some other composition. That's true but one day you feel the need to change.

So after some months of shooting at Bau Rouge beach, after looking the maps, after asking many people i decided to move a little and give a change to another rocky beach not so far.

This new place was a few kilometers from Bau Rouge beach and had no special name. I also went there many times but my favourite image of this place is this one and it's the really first one i did there.

This first day was intended to more to explore the place than to really make images so i just had a light bag with a litlle tripod. Rare thing, i left all my filters at home.

The image was done just before dusk and the dynamic range was a little too high for a single exposure without filtering.
So i took three exposures that i manually and patiently blended (without tonemapping) in the digital darkroom.

As said over, that's my fav from this place but you can have a look here to see another one i also love.
It was done by a stormy morning where the waves were so huges that i could'nt access Bau Rouge beach.

A rainy morning at the sea - Last of the serie

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne - Provence

A long exposure under the clouds and some tips about long exposures

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne in Provence

An other one with the Hoya ND 400 filter giving a 90 seconds exposure in this early and cloudy morning.

Some days ago i received an email from a reader of my french website asking how to determine the exposure time in this kind of images.

On most DSLRs the exposure metering stops at 30s. What to do when you need more ?
First, if you're not familiar with long exposures you can try the scientific method :) Increase the lens aperture (decrease the number) and/or the ISO speed until you reach some values where your camera can meter. Then return to your real settings and try a little extrapolation. If your camera says 25s at f14 and ISO 400 you can try a 100s exposure at f14 and ISO 100, but it's an approximative value.
With digital and when the light is stable you can first try your scientificaly computed settings, look at the histogram and adjust. But at dusk time for example the light can decrease rapidly. If you try a 90  seconds exposure, look at the histogram and find it too much on the left you will want to try 120  seconds but  it will probably be too late and increasing the exposure length will just increase the digital noise in your files ...

So my real advice would be : try, practice, learn to know the light until you become good at guessing the right settings without iterating tries.

Hesitating

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne - Provence

I was not totally happy with the previous version of this image. I can't really explain why in english but i would say that today i find it a little too much. So i reprocessed my 3 exposures in Photomatix and finished with this one.

A rainy morning at the sea - HDR

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne - Provence

Same scene, no GND filter but HDR from 3 exposures.
I didn't try to keep a similar rendition, this one is darker with more saturated colors.

A rainy morning at the sea

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne - Provence

I was there really soon but had to leave the place before 9 am because the rain was too strong.
This one was done with a 0.9 GND filter. I also shot 3 other exposures to try an HDR version :)

HDR tones and colors

HDR seascape at Le Pradet in Provence

That's not my prefered kind of shots, i always say that as an apologize when i post this kind of image but i know some of you love them.

Tech info : Nikon D200 + sigma 10-20, 3 NEF files processed first with SilkyPix, converted to a real HDR image and then tonemapped with Photomatix.

In the cold light of a summer morning

Cold morning light on the Mediterranean coast

These colors are unusual for me and since July i hesitate, keeping this image or not ? I think i'll keep it.

Stuck in the waves

Waves on the Mediterranean coast in Provence

After the impressive rains of the 5 previous days i wasn't in the mood of showing a sunny landscape.

Autum dawn on the sea

Autumn dawn on the Mediterranean sea

Large view here

Crazy night, strong wind and wild sea

Mediterranean storm in Provence

For a few days, we had here a kind of wind storm. The wind was so strong that some of the big ships sailing beteween the continent and Corsica were seriously delayed.
Yesterday in the evening things were going better, so i planned some seascapes for this morning at dawn. In the middle of the night, we were awaken by the noise of thunder, wind and crazy rain. At 5 am, no more noise, i left the bed and drove to the sea under a beautiful starry night. Arrived on the place, standing on the top of a cliff 40 meters above the sea, i was in a really crazy wind with salt water vapors all around me and i saw that the rocks where i wanted to go were under the waves. So i decided to move to an other place not too far. There i could approach the sea a little more but not as wanted. I spent there a few times, took a few shots of the crashing waves but it was definitely not a good day for beautiful seascapes.

Birth of a new day - HDR version

Birth of a new day, HDR with Photomatix 3.1

This is the same image that the one shown in this post, but for this version, the two exposures where processed with the newest version of Photomatix.

I really don't want to write a review of this new version of the most popular HDR software. I had these images to process, i had just read that a new version of Photomatix was available so i have updated my setup before processing my files.
If you look at the Photomatix website, you will see that the list of updated and new features is long but i was specially interested by this one : Option to reduce chromatic aberrations / color fringing added to "Generate HDR options" dialog. I have to say that i wasn't impressed by this new tool.
My most usual workflow for the HDR job is the following :

• First processing of the raw files with Silkypix.
• HDR generation and tonemapping using Photomatix.
• And sometimes, tweaks on the resulting 48 bit TIF file.

Usually, i use the SilkyPix tool to reduce chromatic aberrations during the raw processing. This time i first tried to process the raw files without doing anything about chromatic aberration and give a test to the new Photomatix tool. I was not very convinced by the results ... So i reprocessed my raw files, asked SilkyPix to reduce chromatic aberrations and processed the resulting files in Photomatix without checking the CA reduction option. I found the new result better than the first one.

Vivid colors and long exposure plus one happy feature

Long exposure of some rocks bathing in the Mediterranean sea.

This one is the most recent of my long exposure of rocks bathing in the Mediterranean waves collection. Sometimes, the photographer needs a little luck, capturing such vivid colors and keeping the water perfectly smooth is not always easy.

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Natural threat : cloudy sky over the Mediterranean sea

FishHack, another blogger has just featured this image in his blog and he asked me if i liked his choice.
I mention it here because i really like his choice. This image is one of my big fav from this year. It was done in May. The day before, the meteo said that weather will be very fine during the next days and then i decided to be on the beach before dawn to be able to capture some soft and beautiful blue and pink tones ...
So i woke up before 3 am, drove to the sea threw a little fog and once on the beach i discovered that the weather was not be exactly what i was expecting. I was a little disappointed during a short time but decided to stay and try to catch some skyscapes over the sea. I did two when the sun was just rising and this one a short time later because i noticed the clear blue in the water contrasting with the gray sea and sky. The first two are probably more beautiful because of the rising sun but i think this one is my real fav, probably because it makes me really feel the atmosphere of this morning.

Birth of a new day

Birth of a new day at Le Pradet, Provence

Another day on the beach before dawn ...

Manual DRI from 2 exposures. Depending of the subject of course, i tend to use more and more this technic instead of graduated ND filters.

Large view here.

Color is back

Vivid morning on the Mediterranean sea

After two black and white shots, it was time to come back to my more usual work :)

Autumn on the sea - black and white

Rocks in the Mediterranean waves

Here, it's raining for days and days, so i work on some of my previous images.
This one is from the first days of october.
138 seconds exposure.

Still

That's one of my long exposures from August, just processed because since i'm back from Corsica i'm too busy with administrative things and file processing.

A very soft time

A very soft time - Le Pradet - Provence

Same place, other light, other shot

Récifs in the Mediterranean sea - Le Pradet

Just one month ago, i've posted an other view of these rocks in the Mediterranean waves.
This morning, i went to the same place before dawn. Around 8 am the sky was really blue and i could make this new shot with deep some blue water.

Some other tones

Mediterranean vapors large view

Long exposure (more than 70s) on the Mediterranean sea at dusk time.
Usually this kind of shots is done in black and white and mostly with a strong contrast. Here, i've prefered to keep a few colors and some very soft tones.