BreakerCopyrighted Digital Photograph

The end of a half-the-Pacific journey, as a wave breaks gently on the dawn-lit shore of Hawaii island.

Narrow Vision?

The original photograph is of a shoreline view of the sea, a wave and rocks, which was framed as a standard, 35mm, 4x6 proportion rectangle. The wide, narrow form in this version of the image was a choice inspired by the central, lace-like delicacy of the breaking peak of the wave and the double banding of a gold and azure.

In post-processing, I therefore experimented with the “free-form” version of the crop tool, as opposed to the standard formats, until I was satisfied with the combination of proportion and content.

Water Wonders

 As I have explained previously, I have a fascination with the beauty to be found in frozen moments of moving water. Happily, my camera will capture at up to 1/8000th of a second, which is able to capture the tremendous speed of water shattering, such as in this subject.

However, given that I was photographing in the delicate light of dawn, the highest possible speeds would have only been possible with an excessively high and relatively poor quality ISO of say 3200 or 6400+ and a wide-open aperture of, say f/2.8.

As it was, I compromised with a speed of 1/3200s and a “decent” ISO of 800, such that the camera managed to shoot at an aperture of f/5.6, just enough to achieve reasonable depth-of-field for the breaker, which was about 50 feet away. Such speed nullifies the vibration reduction capability of this particular zoom lens, as does mounting the camera on a tripod. The latter added stability to the capture and compensated a little for the non-use of a “laboratory” speed.  

Settings

Camera: Nikon D800

Lens: VR 70-200mm zoom f/2.8G

Focal Length: 135 mm

Vibration reduction: Off

Focus Mode: Manual

Autofocus Area Mode: Single

Aperture: f/5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/3200s

Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority

Exposure Compensation : -0.7EV

Metering: Matrix

ISO Sensitivity: 800

Mounted on a Tripod

This was photographed during my “Genesis” project, as part of the water depictions and will be posted to the website in due course, once the project is complete.

Copyright Paul Grayson 2015