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I love it when a photograph comes together as sweetly and easily as this one did.
Liz and I had driven over to West Kirby for walk around the marine lake at sunset, and we'd just parked up at the side of the lake when a gaggle of yachts started scooting up and down on the water, looking so much like a flock of giant swans.
I just grabbed my camera out of the car boot and started taking hand held shots of the yachts in various positions.
Once I'd calmed down a bit from my my initial excitement and started to think a bit more clearly about what I as doing I realised that I was facing westwards, towards the setting sun and that, if I timed it right, I could get a really nice sillhouette of a lone yacht against the setting sun.
So I slowed down a bit, put my camera on the tripod, swapped lenses from wide angle to telephoto, positioned the sun and the corresponding streak of highlights on the water where I wanted them, set focus and exposure manually and then waited.
Eventally a single yacht appeared and excecuted a tacking manoeuvre right in the middle of the light streak, which is the photo shown here.
It's great have an exciting photo shooting opportunity, but I really had to get a grip and impose some discipline on myself to get a composition that was meaningful.
Filename - sun yacht 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 100-400mm zoom @ 190mm
Exposure - 1/1000sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - West Kirby marine lake
This image - 640x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Fast shutter speed to freeze movement
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