PRIMARY RESEARCH - Third shoot

For my third shoot I used a DSLR and a neutral density filter. I tried to capture the movement of the sea and the sun as it sets. This shoot didn't work how I planned it and my photos were unsuccessful. I think they were unsuccessful because the sea was very calm meaning there was very little movement in the water. The effect that I was trying to create was unsuccessful. I also think it didn't work because the tide was very low and going out, as well as the sun setting.
 The main problem was that it was too bright because the sun was beginning to set this meant that the camera had to block out more light which it struggled with. All these things played their part together into not creating the effect that Thomas Joshua Cooper, Michael Kenna and Michael Levin use in their photography.
For these photos I used a Shutter speed ranging from 30 - 60 seconds, an ISO of 100 and an aperture of f29. I set the camera up at the edge of the sea with a eight stop ND filter. I think my second shoot achieved a better result compared to any of my other shoots.
Therefore if I was going to do this shoot again I would aim to get to the beach for before the sunset and while the tide is high and going out instead of it begin low and coming in, so that the camera doesn't have a problem with the amount of light. This would also mean that the sea would be rougher as the tide would be coming in to capture more movement in the water.

The images I edited from this set are IMG_7024 and IMG_7025 as these were the more successful photos from the set. Although, this wasn't how I expected the shoot to come out I learnt a lot from this shoot about the perfect conditions needed in order to create good long exposure photos. I learnt that the sky can be your enemy when shooting a long exposure image, maybe a bigger stop filter would have compensated for the amount of light because this shoot was shot using an eight stop neutral density filter which controls the amount of light which enters the lens and the photos still very over exposed.

I liked the movement captured in the water however the sky was over exposed and it reflected off of the water. The only way to you could create long exposure photos in these conditions would be to do a exposure for the sky and then a separate exposure for the sea and then merge the two together.

Although this didn't work as well as some of my other shoot I feel this is the technique I would like to carry on using for my final major project.