The Photo

I’d like to dedicate this photo to Viktoria (*islandtime).

Around a month ago we had some interesting skies in Portugal and I had some free time, so I headed out to a place called Estoril to do some shooting.
Unfortunately the tide was a lot higher than I had expected so I couldn’t get to the place I wanted to, and the sun wasn’t setting as far to the south as I’d hoped, making it hard to compose the shot of some steps into a natural swimming pool that I’d also planned to get.

Every composition I tried was too cluttered and just wouldn’t work, and foolishly I wasted the best light trying to create a shot that was never going to happen.
After the light had gone I explored a little more and found this metal railing going down into the water.
I liked the different textures and colours of the rust, as well as the shiny metal of the bolts in the base and the rough concrete, and I thought that it might contrast well with the sea if it was flattened out with a long exposure.

When I uploaded the day’s work onto my computer I wasn’t really sure about any of the shots, but Viktoria saw this on my website and told me that she liked it, which in turn caused me to look at it afresh and decide to submit it.

So as I said, this photo is dedicated to Viktoria, a wonderful photographer and an incredibly friendly and supportive watcher.

Technique

By the time I found this shot it was almost completely dark with just a faint pink afterglow on the horizon, so I knew the exposure would be a long one. I used a spot meter on the concrete infront of me (which I guessed to be about the mid-tone in the exposure). At f9 the camera was telling me that the shot was still around a stop underexposed, so rather than go to f6.7 (an extra stop), I decided to make the exposure longer. One minute would be an extra stop, but I added a little extra just to make sure.

Even when the sky is this dark, it’s still significantly brighter than the foreground and ocean, so I used a 2 stop ND graduated filter with a hard graduation laid across the horizon line.

To compose a shot like this it’s important that all the elements are resolved separately, so first I made sure that the metal railing didn’t break the horizon or the line of the pier on the right. I also tried to make sure that the wire cables didn’t interfere with the line of the concrete quay, and finally make sure that there was nothing too close to the edges of the frame (like the plate where the railing is bolted to the concrete).

Finally, I opened the shutter using a cable release and left it open for around 1 minute and 15 seconds.

Post Processing

This shot has had a little more post-processing than my shots usually do.
It was still a little underexposed, so I pushed the RAW file by around an extra stop, and then tweaked contrast using levels in Aperture.
I cloned off a dust spot, and then ran the image through Neat Image, to give some gentle noise reduction, as some noise had started to show in the bottom left corner from pushing the exposure of the RAW file.
In Photoshop, the image was resized, and then sharpened for the web (80%, radius 0.8, threshold 4)
Finally I framed it and added the title.

Metadata

Taken at Estoril, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20mm | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) hard GND
77.2 seconds | f9 | 12mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and PS.