The Photo

This image was taken back in February on a long weekend trip in southern Portugal. I took quite a few shots I was happy with on the trip and I’ll probably submit some of them over the next couple of months. My previous submission [link] was taken on the same trip, on the day before I took this.

The weather was mostly cloudy and overcast, which gave an interesting atmosphere for waterscapes and I had a lot of fun shooting.

On our journey home to Lisbon, we made a detour to pass a place called Carrasqueira, a fishing village on a river estuary about 150km south of Lisbon.
I’d been there once before, and had a really successful shooting session, capturing this [link] and this [link] so I was eager to go there again. This time I had very different conditions, overcast sky and subdued lighting, but the location is so wonderful that it’s always a pleasure to photograph there, and I was equally happy with 3 or 4 shots from this session. I was also surprised to see exactly the same boat there as 6 months ago…

On my first visit I’d had the place to myself, but this time there were quite a few other photographers wandering around the piers shooting. The structures are quite flimsy and shake a lot when people move on them, so I spent a fair amount of time sitting behind my tripod waiting for people to pass so the pier would stop shaking and I could make an exposure.

The place is wonderful though, and transmits such a feeling of peace and calm that it’s a pleasure to be there and photograph.

Technique

With shots of piers like this, I will usually attempt to do a long exposure as the smooth water draws attention to the texture of the wood on the pier.

As it was still very light, I used a 9 stop Hoya ND400 filter to allow me to use a long shutter time. Before attatching the filter though, I measured the exposure of the pier to get my base reading (1/15), then I took a meter reading from the sky to see how much brighter it was and see how many stops of ND grad filter I’d need to hold the sky back. As it happens the sky wasn’t that much brighter than the foreground (around 4 stops), but I used a 3 stop filter anyway to intentionally darken the sky a little more.
When I’d lined up the graduated filter, I took off the entire graduated filter holder with the filters still in place, and screwed the Hoya ND400 onto the lens. I then place the grad holder back on the lens and added nine stops of exposure to the base exposure I’d already measured (this is done by simply doubling the base exposure 9 times) which gave me an exposure time of 30 seconds.

After that, it’s just a matter of clicking open the shutter with a cable release and waiting…

Post-Processing

I recorded the image in RAW format, and imported it into Aperture, my RAW processing software. The image has had minor tweaks to the contrast, and I reduced the saturation a little. The Hoya ND400 often leaves a warm hue to an image, really enhancing the red channel. I usually don’t mind it, but on this case I didn’t want it there, so the cast was removed and the image de-saturated to resemble the scene as I remembered it more closely.
Finally I gave the image some subtle noise reduction in the shadows of the sky and water, before sharpening.
For the web, the image was imported into PS where I resized it, and then gave it a final level of sharpening (Lab colour – Lightness channel – Unsharp Mask 65%, 0.7 radius, Threshold 4 – Back to RGB colour)

Metadata

Taken at Carrasqueira, Alentejo, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Hoya ND400 (9 stop) | Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard GND
30 seconds | f11 | 10mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture. Title in PS CS