Onegav

There was an awesome “sky crack” this evening as I left work. It was so good, I decided to go back to the spot I visited to photograph “Phase One“, due to its elevated view back across Deeside towards the Clwydian Mountains, to try and capture it.

I waited a good while for the sun to burst through the clouds again, as it had done a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately, as much as I waited and experimented with a few different compositions, it just didn’t kick off again, like it had.

Thats not to say the sky still didn’t look amazing, and full of colour, it truly did, but you have to love those shafts of sun light that beam down from the heavens, don’t you!

I looked around for some other compositions whilst I waited, and this silhouette of a low horizon and a pylon, is my kind of thing.

However, it was the view back towards the mountains that held most of the magic. I tweaked my settings, setup exposure bracketing and lined my tripod up. I framed the shot, just how I wanted it, but the one thing I couldn’t do anything about was where the clouds wanted to go.

I waited as long as I could, and I’m really pleased with the images I captured, but I still think there is a better photograph tucked up here, I just need a drop of luck, and maybe some timing to get the very most from it.

For those interested, settings for todays main shot were an 18mm focal length, f/9.0, 1/30th of a second shutter and ISO100. Camera sat on my tripod, polarising filter on and exposure bracketing of two stops up and two stops down.

Learnings – the polarising filter really helped pull the maximum colour from the sky, and I can see me using it a lot more for landscape images.

What was nice today, was that the shot was quite technical, however I dialled in the settings without really thinking about it, and there is a real satisfaction in becoming one with a tool such as a camera. It enables you to really focus on what maters, the creative side of things, which I love.