View From The Roadside

Moving water, such as waves on a beach, are an interesting topic of discussion in photography. Waves are, by their nature, fluid things, they move, they break on the beach, they flow back before the next waves arrives, all while making that familiar sound of the sea. Photographs don’t move, so what do you do about the waves? I went back to Dorset last weekend, and back to Durdle Door. I took a number of shots over the hour and a bit I was there, but I’ve picked these three out because of their shutter times.

Durdle Door - Short, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.
The first uses a short shutter time, 1/20 of a second. The waves, and the sea, are caught in a moment, frozen. They look “real”, the way we see waves as they move. I must admit, I don’t really favour this approach on a shot like this. To me, the waves in this shot should be moving, should be flowing. I take issue with the “real” tag too, this is really no more real than any other shot, since waves do move, they don’t stand about like they seem to do in this shot. They look a little, well, boring.

Away from the waves, getting the setting sun to cast light on the inside of Durdle Door seems to be something that might only happen on a handful of days later in the year, which is a pity.

Durdle Door - Long, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.
This is a much longer shutter time, 6 seconds. In that time a wave has gone through the whole cycle of forming, breaking, and washing back. This means you can’t actually see “the wave” at all, but it gives the see this misty, ghostly feel. The water looks smoother, calmer, quieter. It also doesn’t have any distracting details in it. This can be a great effect where you wouldn’t see so much of the wave, such as over rocks in the foreground of a sunset. Here, where you can see a long stretch of the beach, I don’t think it works so well. You expect to see waves here, yet they aren’t there. It gives the picture an unsettling feeling, that something isn’t quite right, which isn’t the mood I was looking for at all.
Light-wise, the sun has set by this point, and Durdle Door is light by the reflected light from the grey rain clouds passing overhead. It gives a lovely even light across the whole rock. It was taken with an aperture of f22, which has caused a little softness, as it does on smaller-than-35mm sensors. I should have stuck to f16.

Durdle Door - Medium, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.
This is a medium shutter time, 1/4 of a second, a compromise between the long and the short. It’s long enough to capture some movement of the waves, but not so short that they no longer look like waves. Of these pictures, the waves in this are my favourite. They still have the appearance of waves, so the sea doesn’t look alien or out of place, but you can see them just about to break, they still have that movement lacking from the short shutter time, which is such an important aspects of waves.
The light is lovely here too. It’s sunset light, with it’s slightly golden colour, but it’s not direct light either, the sun has gone behind clouds on the horizon. This light is reflected from the rain clouds overhead, who are still seeing the setting sun. As it’s reflected, it light the whole of Durdle Door evenly. with no harsh shadows.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under About Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.