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Sometimes I think I must be crazy!
It's a freezing cold and blustery December morning in 2015 and for some strange reason I'm hunched over my camera and tripod at Penmon Point on the southeastern tip of the Isle of Anglesey, just off the North Wales coast, photographing the iconic lighthouse as the sun sort of comes up over my right shoulder, storm clouds wrack overhead and the rising tide threatens to engulf me.
There was a good reason for my chilly vigil; I was there shooting the hundreds of still images needed to make my time lapse video of the tide coming in at Penmon.
One of the side benefits of shooting hundreds of images in rapid sucession is that, more often than not, there will be one or two frames that make for a good static picture in their own right, having captured a 'decisive moment' in which the elements of a composition fit together to make a pleasing whole.
This particular frame, out of the hundreds I shot that morning, struck me as such an image, in which the contrast and placement of the moving elements (clouds and waves) and static elements (lighthouse, island and rocks) complimented each other very nicely.
In other frames the patterns on the breaking waves and clouds clashed rather than creating a harmonious whole, but in this one exposure every element seems to be just right. (To my eye anyway!)
Worth getting a little cold and windswept for, not to mention the soggy feet when one particularly vigorous wave washed over my boots while I was concentrating on picture taking.
Filename - penmon lighthouse 11.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 17-40mm zoom @ 17mm
Exposure - 4 secs @ f16, ISO100
Location - Penmon Point, Anglesey
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CC
Comments - Neutral density graduated filter used to darken the sky
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