This is a return to my roots: a landscape with sunset colours. This is the sort of photos I was taking 20 ago.
I took this photo this summer. I had had that image in my head for a while. So searched the map where I could potentially find the scene I had imagined, then went when I was on holiday for a day trip.
These are fishing huts on a small river just before it reaches the sea in South-West France. They’re ancient and still used to this day (the one in the foreground was actually fishing dinner earlier in the day).
I was looking for a number of things even before I got there:
- I wanted a sunset.
- I wanted the sun to be pointed at by the masts.
- I wanted to see the nets and their reflection in the water.
So for a start, the location I chose was aligned with where I thought the sun would set on that day. I followed the coast using satellite images until I found what I was looking for. It was a bit approximative because I’m not used to summer sunsets here. But I got it mostly right.
We got there for lunch time. We went around the place during the day to scout the location and decide where to take the photos later, Then it was a waiting game.
When the time came, I had to be fairly fast because the sun sets quickly and you don’t have second chances.
I had spotted this location during the day: nearly in line with the river, most probably in line with the sunset. So this was the first sunset photo I took because I knew I wanted the sun fairly high to line up with a mast.
I also wanted the reflection of the sun in the water to give more depth to the shot. So I had to move around a little but to get the right angle to line everything up. I only had a couple of shots for this scene and I braketted like crazy from 0EV to -2EV just in case (I lost the habit of shooting into the sun).
The resulting image is a straightforward -2EV f/16 photo with next to no editing except straightening the horizon which I messed up in the flow of the action (no tripod for this shot).
Bonus: tons of triangles everywhere in the photo due to the nets and the huts.
The foreground shows a little bit of the concrete peer I was on. I didn’t crop it out because it would have messed up the original framing. I guess I could have cloned it out, but it was part of the story for me so I left it.
#Photography #PhotoExplained #Analysis