When Long Exposure Goes Bad!

This photo was taken at an eight-minute exposure. In my mind’s eye, I can see you shaking your head and asking, ‘Why?’

After all, the subject is clear, the day is bright and sunny, the sea and the sky are blue. You should just be able to set f/11, 1/120s and ISO 100. Just the sort of picture that PAGB camera club judges would dismiss as a ‘snapshot,’ a postcard or calendar shot.

Ah dear reader, I wanted to be ‘clever.’ I thought that if I put a dense nd filter on front of the lens, I could banish people from the photo and calm the sea down a bit.

If you’ve ever used a ’stopper,’ you’ll know that it reduces the light entering the camera enabling you to extend exposure time. Providing people keep moving while the exposure is being taken, you shouldn’t see anyone in the final image at all.

I wasn’t successful in my aim. Despite the exposure time of eight minutes with a superstopper which reduced exposure by 15 stops, three people stayed in the same spot the whole time, while someone else walked in front of the camera with two minutes to go, put his bag down, got his binoculars out, then moved a couple of yards away and repeated the process. He is the ‘ghost’ you can see in the picture.

Fearful of draining my battery, and disheartened by the experience, I didn’t repeat the exposure with the superstopper but simply took calendar shots instead.

I was at Penmon on the northeast tip of Anglesey with the ShootMirrorless crowd. We had a last minute invitation and we were so glad that we went. For one thing, the weather was perfect. As we drove to Anglesey, the light was bright and white, the hills and mountains of the mainland made wonderful curves against each other. As we were on the cusp of summer, the temperature was just right.

ShootMirrorless is a North Wales based collective of keen photographers and videographers who go out together to visit photogenic locations within reasonable driving distance and who help each other understand how to use their mirrorless cameras. No DSLRs on this trip. Nor Pros. Primarily a group of people with photography in common.

I was particularly impressed by The Van Girls who bring their camper vans and brew up tea and coffee for the hordes at each stop. That was VERY homely. Everyone else had brought their camping chairs.

From Penmon, we drove, with halts, to Beaumaris. The rest had fish and chips. Len and I stopped at The Spinning Wheel cafe where I was at least able to enjoy a large baked potato with cheese and onion while Len was able to have a roast dinner. The least enjoyable thing about this break has been that there has been nowhere where we could sit down for a dinner together. For one thing, Basil was with us, and dogs don’t seem to be overly popular in Wales, and I, being coeliac, need to eat gluten free. But in Beaumaris, I had an ice cream cornet for the first time in years. Not only did the shop make its own ice cream, it even stocked gluten free cones.

From Beaumaris, we drove to Cable Bay on the southern coast of the island. It was a miraculous evening. We sat at the edge of the car park overlooking the bay, where people were still bathing, as the light turned golden lighting up the sea thrift on the cliffs. The waves rolled in gently.

Then we dispersed to chosen positions to capture the sunset. A few clouds on the horizon added to the interest of the sky. I settled for a position further up the hill where I could put a group of photographers into my photos for scale. See today’s extra image. 

Basil, being a sensible sort of dog, found some dry grass on the hillside which he scraped together for a bed and then dozed while Len fussed about my losing all my kit down the hill and I tried to work out what I was seeing on the back of my camera. I have to confess I wasn’t in a good position to work things out properly from looking at the screen. But I wasn’t going to admit it.

We packed up our gear shortly before ten pm once the sun had finally disappeared, to drive back to Colwyn Bay, arriving home around 11 pm. We left others still at the site enjoying a glass of wine. The Van Girls were still in attendance.

My thanks to ShootMirrorless for introducing us to locations which we would otherwise never have known nor seen. And it was a real bonus to be in sociable company.

Coda: the other obvious thing about the framing of this photo is that the horizon of the sea should have lined up the boundary between the green base and the lowermost black band. Duh!