Photography of sand, water & time
by Mark ~ August 11th, 2007. Filed under: Destinations, Great Lakes, Michigan, abstracts, composition, field techniques, landscape, nature photography, technique, travels.During my recent trip to Michigan’s U.P. (Upper Penninsula for you out of state folk) – I spent most of my mornings taking advantage of the low water levels in Lake Superior. In several bays, there were quite a few sandbars (or sandbanks if you prefer) and ‘tidepools’ that made for some really interesting shoreline study. The shallow water was also very warm to wade through. I would guess in some of the shallow areas the water temp reached 90 deg F +! Quite remarkable considering a lake where at depth it is usually a constant 42 deg F. I also wanted to try out a new filter I purchased recently – a Singh Ray Vari-ND filter. I like to think of this thing as a time machine on the front of my lens!
By rotating this filter like a polarizer, you can significantly alter the amount of light entering the lens (down to almost pitch black). Therefore your exposure times are greatly increased over what you would normally be able to do by lowering ISO or stopping down. It is a pricey little gizmo, but highly suited for situations like my time on the sandbars. It can be a bit tricky to use, because it becomes hard to see through the viewfinder with the darker settings. It is also a pain in the butt to use with a polarizer. If you use a polarizer with it, everytime you turn the VariND, you mess up your polarizer setting. So it almost takes a third hand to tweak all of these rotating rings. I guess you could say I am still getting used to it, but I do like the ethereal effects it creates with moving water.
Another aspect I sought out were some interesting graphical shapes and lines to work into my photographs, with no footprints. This wasn’t so easy at times, because although I was alone on the beach at dawn, the traffic from the prior day was obvious in many areas. Fortunately shifting winds and wave patterns helped erase some of the prior visitors, almost as if they were never there. By keeping them simple with no scale reference, I imagined these photographs could be visualized as small sections of a beach to enormous 100 foot tall dunes.
The end result of this unique environment and some tools to help bring forth a vision are photographs that I became very excited about. They are different than anything I have ever done before and helped re-energize some of my creative slump of late. I hope you enjoy them as well.
August 11th, 2007 at
Very nice – the one on the top right, with the horizontal orientation, is my favorite. Sand and sea are indistinguishable, and the detail is even more interesting because it’s unexpected.
August 11th, 2007 at
Awesome pics. I love to see people experiment it brings forth so much growth in anyone. It is interesting getting to see pics from an area I’ve never gotten to see. Thanks for bringing this area to life for me. I can’t wait to see more.
August 12th, 2007 at
Beautiful shots. I really like the warm tones. I am interested in your use of a polarizer. I hadn’t tried one on my Vari ND because the Singh-Ray website said not to use the two together, though they didn’t explain why. If it is just the rotational issue, that is easy (though,as you say, a bit of a pain in the butt) to deal with. Did you notice anything unusual etc with the images that had to be corrected or was everything ‘right’ from the start?
I think I may e-mail Sing-Ray and ask them what the exact issue with using a polarizer and the Vari ND that they warn about might be.
Very impressive shots!
Howard
August 12th, 2007 at
Howard, for these particular shots, I did very little correction other than slight clarity/vibrance tweaks in Lightroom. I gave up on using the polarizer because I would polarize the scene, then start to darken it, but then it became too dark for me to see where to adjust the polarizer back to. I am thinking a small paint mark on the polarizer rotating ring to line up with a mark on the lens would resolve this issue.
I did encounter some images that have some very unusual, uneven darkening on them. I don’t know yet what caused this. The effect is kinda cool.
August 12th, 2007 at
Very nice – I’ve got to get me one of them. I’ve seen where Tony Sweet talks them up quite a bit, and frankly I’m just getting tired of getting up at 4 am for the lighting I need to make images like this.
Good for you~!
August 13th, 2007 at
Those are great Mark!
I have always wanted one of those filters, but was afraid it might become one of those things I use a few times and then it would work its way to the bottom of the bag to rarely be seen again. Looks like it might be a valuable tool!
Ron
August 13th, 2007 at
I wonder, what if you were to put the polarizer on and adjust it to where you want it and then hold it in that position with one hand while screwing the ND into it with the other and continuing to hold the polarizer while adjusting the ND. Seems like it might be fairly cumbersome though even if it did work.
August 13th, 2007 at
Howard, that is what I did. Not impossible to do, just cumbersome. My polarizer is thin-ring also, making it a bit more challenging – throw a lens hood on top of all that and you have a lot of fun ahead of you!
August 13th, 2007 at
Yes, I see what you mean!
Howard
August 15th, 2007 at
Peaceful, calming images. Love the graphic nature of the flowing lines and the mystery that the lack of scale produces.
Hmm, may have to look into one of those vari-nd filters. This blogging stuff can be very bad on the bank account!
Peace, Heather
August 15th, 2007 at
Hey Mark, excellent images, I hope to get up there one day soon.
August 17th, 2007 at
Wow, these are just amazing, Mark. So the golden color was just the color of the light that morning, or it had to do with the long exposure?
August 17th, 2007 at
Judith – it was the warm light of the morning – these were shot shortly after sunrise.
August 18th, 2007 at
They’re all beautiful, I like the curve in the top left vertical the most. The yellow/blue hues are warm and attractive. I had no idea UP had scenery like this.
August 19th, 2007 at
Thank you all for the comments.
Tom, you wrote something I enjoy hearing (ie. reading) immensely … “I had no idea…”
Because that is one of my primary goals with my photographs – to show something unfamiliar with the familiar. So thank you for that.
August 21st, 2007 at
I can see why you are excited Mark, these are fantastic images, I checked on that filter it is definitely pricey. Wonderful work.