Dolmen at dawn

A misty morning at dolmen D54 near Havelte, Drenthe, The Netherlands.

Another early morning shoot. I got up at 5.10, grabbed my gear and prepared to leave. At 5.35, Ton picked me up and we drove to Groningen. There, we met up with Niels and drove to the dolmen near Havelte. When we arrived, John was already there so there you go: a four-person blip meet!

We had made plans to use our speedlites to light the dolmen from the inside, synchronizing three flash units in a master-slave configuration. After some messing around, we couldn't get it to work the way we wanted to, so I decided to use just my speedlite and remote trigger and got this result.

The others have also posted their takes on this scene and it's quite interesting to see the differences between our shots. A good learning experience as I was way out of my comfort zone this morning:

* The sky wasn't as anticipated. Way too much fog and not the partly cloudy sky that was forecasted. I "fixed" that by going for a panorama format.
* To the right of the dolmen, there is a hill, which makes the whole images looks tilted when the camera is leveled as it normally is. The fact that the trees on the hill are also not standing straight doesn't help either. Dilemma: make the image look right and tilt the camera, or show the scene as it is in reality? As you can see, I decided to go for the first option. I think it looks more natural this way.
* Using the off-camera flash is something I have not done a lot. I do like the way this turned out here, though I still think it would have looked so much cooler if we would have been able to have two more flash units inside the dolmen.

All in all, it was a great morning which has given me some food for thought. Definitely a location to revisit. Thanks Ton, Niels and John!

Actually not that bad bigger...