Wednesday, March 01, 2006

A Walk on the Beach - Snow, Pebbles and Ice - Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

A few weekends ago I went north to Ingonish, Cape Breton; a large island just north of mainland Nova Scotia and about a 5 hour drive from Halifax. I spent a part of the day walking along the beach. At first I had a hard time finding something to photograph, but all of my pictures were actually on the ground. The beach was partly covered in snow and ice and there were pebbles scattered around. Once I saw this, I spent about an hour looking for good compositions and shooting photos.













































4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great images, especially the top 2. The simplicity of the 1st, and the shape and symmetry of the 2nd are great. The others are good, but there are peripheral distracting elements - may improve from cropping in a little.

Technically, 3 of the 4 have snow which is tinged to the blue end. This means your white balance is out. Do some test shots (RAW) and, when you process the RAW images, find a value of Kelvin that leads to white snow. Then, use that to set up a custom white balance for snow in one of the customisable slots in the 350D software. Another good rule is: for images with a majority of white or light tones, always over-expose the image more than the camera meter indicates as a correct exposure. This is because the camera's sensor sees all the white/light tones, and thinks the image will be over-exposed, so it compensates by under-exposing. Thus, if you over-expose, you have a better chance to get white snow. Try +1 and +2 stops (or EV) with each image, and then discard the one that's not right. Or, use RAW and do it in software, but it's best to get it as close as possible when taking the image I think.

Critical Light said...

Hi there,

Right, I did notice the blue tinge to the snow so I should go back to the RAW analysis and play with that a little more. Setting a custom balance in the camera is a great idea. Hadn't thought about that. All of the exposures with the snow were over-exposed to compensate for the exposure set by the camera. I always try to push the histogram as far right as possible.

I agree with the last two images. I like the colour of the pebbles and the arrangement but they do need cleaning up a little.

Damian

Critical Light said...

Hi,

I re-adjusted the white balance in RAW using the dropper and targeting a bright white area of the snow. I can see the difference that makes.

Damian

Anonymous said...

Hi
I wouldn't be too fixed on pushing the histogram as far right as possible. I think it's good to have it with a right-sided bias, but the dark tones need populating too...