It had been a great day all day. The kind of day that was clearly going to end promisingly for photography - rain showers interspersed with sunny spells in a sky that whilst being full of clouds, could never be described as overcast.
I also had a day off, and I'd been planning to get away and do some shooting all week.

Carrasqueira, about 130km from my home in Lisbon, a place I've shot on 2 occasions and on both times have loved shooting there and got totally different conditions. It had been a year since my last trip, the tide tables told me that the water would be at it's highest, so about 2 and a half hours before sunset I climbed into the car and set off.

Complete gridlock in Lisbon, traffic just not moving, it took me an hour just to get out of the city. Never above second gear, the smell of exhaust fumes everywhere in the streets....eventually I find myself heading south over the huge suspension bridge that connects Lisbon with the south of the country.
Finally into top gear, finally the car is eating up the distance, but even now I know I'm going to be pushing it to get there before sunset, and I can see that, as expected, it's going to be a great evening.
Showers and then sunshine alternate across the road infront of me as the southern outskirts of Lisbon eventually turn into farmland, and the countryside starts to open up around me.
I'm going as fast as the law will allow me along the motorway, off at the exit to Alcacer do Sal, over the river and then heading due west to the estuary and the coast along a quiet road through kilometer-after kilometer of pine forest.
I've barely slowed down as the road is straight and flat and empty, the car feels as though it's hurtling past the trees and the clock tells me that there is less than 25 minutes till sunset.

After what seems forever I arrive at the turn off to the village of Carrasquiera, drive straight through to the fisherman's huts that stand next to the network of piers which extend hundreds of meters into the water.
There are ten minutes until sunset.
Turn off the engine, and after the noise of driving at speed for the last hour, the silence seems to scream, the stillness after the velocity of the journey is overwhelming.
Open the door.
Get out.
Breathe.


The Photo

Carraspquiera, a location I've shot before and one which always makes me happy just to be there...it's just so calm and peaceful to be working there with a camera.
On arriving, I went straight to this composition...it's one I've shot before, but never been satisfied with, and I wanted to get it when the light was at it's peak.
I metered the water and used a Singh Ray reverse grad to keep detail in the sky. The sky really was this dark and brooding, there had been brief storms here all day, and on the horizon you can see the wall of rain blowing in from the next one.
I then added a Hoya 9 stop ND filter and dialed 9 extra stops into the camera, which gave me a shutter time of 30 seconds.

This was the first time I'd ever used a Singh Ray filter, and I was amazed at how much of a colour cast it gives. Whist on it's own it's not too noticable, with the Hoya ND400, which also warms images a little, it seems to combine to give a quite pronounced cast. In this respect, Lee filters are considerably more natural.
In post I had to cool off the colour temperature and desaturate the shot to get it looking closer to how I remember the scene, and closer to other shots I took using Lee filters.


Metadata

Taken at Carrasqueira, Alentejo, Portugal
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 17-35 f2.8 ED
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Singh Ray 4-stop Reverse GND | Hoya ND400
30 seconds | f9.5 | 17mm

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