Some of my recent submissions have been more detail shots than classic waterscapes, and I wanted to submit something that went back to doing what I like best...standing on a rock with my camera pointed at the sea and the sky.

I'd gone to a place called Estoril, as it has some large boulders on the coast. The tide was really low revealing lots of moss and seaweed encrusted rock which was being lit be the late sun.
Between the rocks there are lots of deep tidal pools which slowly fill and drain as the water runs in and out of them.

On the surface the water seemed to be barely moving, and was glass-like. There was good cloud and some beautful light, so I set up to try and get as much of the rock's texture in the light, as well as the sky reflection in the still water.

I used a polarizer to bring out the colour contrast and saturate the sky, as well as balance the reflection in the water. I wanted to try to get both the reflection of the sky, as well as still be able to see the bottom of the tidal pool.

I took a spot meter from the well lit rocks, as they were my mid-tone, which meant that the shadows wouldn't be lost, and the reflection in the water wouldn't be too bright to blow out the highlights. The sky though would have been too bright and washed out, so I darkened it with a 2 stop ND graduated filter.

The shutter time was 4 seconds, which has blurred the clouds a little (for some reason the EXIF data on this one is showing as 43 seconds...I suspect that's a result of me playing around with the metadata settings in my RAW converter).

Taken in Estoril, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon cable release
Hoya Pro 1 Circular polarizer | Cokin ZPro ND4 (2 stop) Soft grad filter
f10 | 4 seconds | 10mm
Processed from RAW in Apple Aperture (saturation, contrast, white balance, sharpening, resize and JPEG conversion). Frame in PS CS