Bass Rock, Belhaven Bay, Dunbar

On this day there were loads of light, it was a lovely day. Not so great for photographing tho. Without using a filter I got an exposure of around 1/100th of a second. What that means is that the water movement would have been frozen – not the look I wanted and to be frank, I could get that kinda shot with any camera even with a mobile phone. Using a dark filter that reduces the light entering the camera (a Kase Filters UK 6 stop ND filter in this case) resulted in a longer exposure – 1.3 seconds long to be precise. This means that the camera is taking a picture for 1.3sec, and capturing all that movement in the waves in one picture.

To have a sharp image, the camera needs to be perfectly still so using a tripod is absolutely necessary for an image like this, otherwise, the Bass Rock would be blurred. Setting up a tripod in wet sand can be challenging and very frustrating as well (a few swear words may have left my lips, to be honest )- as the water can wash the sand away from below the tripod, resulting in the camera moving, which we DO NOT want!

Then you need to get the timing right as well. Ideally, I wanted to capture the waves crashing a wee bit but these waves weren’t big enough for that. It would have been more ideal if there were massive waves but hey, I am still happy with this image!

This does not whatsoever represent the whole thinking and process behind taking a picture, it really is just a tiny bit of what goes behind making an image! Hope you enjoyed a bit of the “behind the camera” story