If you want to learn how I process my images, my workflow and lighting techniques.
Last night, I went out in search of the perfect sunset. The weather of late has been insipid, lacking inspiration and every evening for the last two weeks the sky has been either pure white or a cloudless blue. But I decided to go out last night, whatever the weather.
By the time I got to Portland, the clouds were already beginning to show their teeth. I set up my tripod on the edge of the rocks, waiting to see if any colour bled its way from the sun into the clouds. I began to take a few images, they lacked colour and tone.
It was then, way to my left and out of shot, that I noticed a tornado-like cloud formation begin to form and arch its way across the sky. I waited for a moment and it joined the moody clouds behind the lighthouse. I checked how wide the composition would be – absolutely no chance of shooting all of it at 16mm. I was going to have to go panorama. So I levelled my tripod as fast as I could, wrenching the camera into vertical mode and swinging around to the left. I manually focussed on the rocks in front of me and took my first exposure. I needed to keep the exposure time down as the cloud formation was already becoming diluted and I really didn’t want to miss this shot. I managed to get away with just under 1 second each.
I took an image, panned to the right a tad, took another. I ended up with 8 images. By the time I took the last one of the spiralling clouds to the right of the lighthouse, the tornado-like formation was gone. During the penultimate exposure, the lighthouse came on and I hoped that I had picked up some of the light from it. I had been in the right place at the right time and just about managed to get the shot. It reminds me somewhat of a Milky-Way of clouds, the way the formation arches up from the horizon and across the sky. I have never seen clouds like it, but I was so glad that I was there to capture it.
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