Well, this certainly isn’t the most exciting image I’ve created, but it is neat in that it’s a low perspective of a simple waterfront scene.
One afternoon on the beach by Peconic Bay, I got the idea to shoot some of the waves coming in and crashing by a jetty. I used a long focal length to compress the background, in this case an island, and bring it closer to the foreground. The first few handheld shots were meh…I had to use a fast enough shutter to keep the images sharp, which froze the action of the water. I thought some motion blur in the water would be a nicer look.
In order to slow the shutter enough to do that, I had to put the camera on a support. Even on the lowest possible height with the tripod, I felt the camera was still too high. So I used a Platypod – a plate you can mount a ball head to and place on the ground. Here, I used a piece of wood so the legs of the Platypod did not sink into the sand.
I lay on the sand on an old towel and tried some slower shutter speeds, looking for the wave formation that was the most interesting. As the tide was coming in, I had to move my position a few times and eventually the jetty was too far under water to be seen.
Final image: Canon 5D Mark IV, 70-200mm zoom at 130mm, f/16 for 1/15 sec at iso 50.
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