July: month in review
Each month I aim to pick an image that, in my mind at least, captures the flavour of that month. It might not be the best image from the month, or the most spectacular of subjects; it just needs to illustrate something about the month. The value for me is in the writing - it’s a tool for review and reflection. If you enjoy the words and picture, that’s a bonus!
Belhaven Bridge, Dunbar
Fujifilm X-H2S | 55mm f/11 15s ISO160
What’s this month’s image? It’s the Belhaven Bridge at Dunbar, also dubbed the bridge to nowhere. I’ll be honest, I’m still making my mind up about the image, but there’s enough here to justify a few words.
Did you do anything to it? There’s a little more going on here than is hopefully apparent on first look. The shot is actually a three shot composite; three shots taken at the same location quite close together and then blended together (a technique I’ve also seen referred to as time blending). I’ll elaborate on the reasons for doing this below, but essentially what the technique allows me to do is pick the best parts from each of the individual images to produce something that is, I’d hope, greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from the blending, it’s quite a conventional shot and there’s not much else been done in post-processing.
What’s it doing here? Helen was away in the Lakes towards the end of the month, leaving me with a little time on my hands. I needed to be in Edinburgh at some point, so decided to combine this with a meander down the East Coast, down towards St Abbs Head, to recce a couple of locations. We’d stopped here before briefly but in less than ideal conditions and I’d resolved to return when conditions were better.
Now, I think that the ideal conditions for this location would be a high tide to cover the beach and submerge a portion of the bridge; sunrise would work very well and a sunset shot would also be an option. Finally, you’d want to be here when the location was relatively deserted. Sadly, these weren’t the conditions I had…
The single most important factor is the tide; if the tide is out the scene becomes very messy as the seaweed-strewn rock bed of the channel under the bridge becomes exposed. I’d checked the tide times and there were two high tides when I was in the area, one at around 3pm when the light would be horrible and the other around 3am when there wouldn’t be any light at all! The second factor is the height of the tide, and given the time of year the high tide would probably be about a metre and a half below the maximal level. This wasn’t ideal, but I decided to give it a go on the basis I could work out compositions if I decided to come back later in the year.
The scene, when I arrived, was worse than feared… Mid-afternoon on a sunny day at the height of the summer holidays meant that the beach was hoaching with kids, kayakers and surfers. To counter these challenges I first put the camera on the tripod and used an ND filter to slow the shutter speed right down. What this does is blur movement and, if you have objects moving in the frame, this either makes them disappear completely or just leaves some faint ghosting which is easier to clean up.
The shutter speed here isn’t slow enough to completely remove objects, which is where the time blend comes into play. By taking a series of images with the same settings I’m able to blend the ‘clean’ sections to remove the distractions, leaving just the elements I wanted, namely the bridge and Bass Rock in the background. Which just leaves the infamous Lady in Red…
This lady had (frustratingly at the time) wandered into the frame to take pictures of her kids jumping off the bridge. I took the shot while she was stood there because at that point the right side of the bridge was clear. Immediately after this shot was taken the children did jump from the bridge and, having done it once, proceeded to do it again… and again… and again. Joined by many friends. In short, carnage broke out and I packed up.
However, when I looked at the shot on the computer it transpired that she had stood stock still for the full 15 seconds of the exposure and was pretty sharp. Now, it would have taken a couple of seconds to take her out of the shot, but there is a trope in club photography that any contemplative (aka dull) landscape is only enhanced by the presence of some human interest, preferably wearing a red jacket. You will make your own mind up, but I think her presence causes the viewer to pause, and that’s generally a good thing.
I did get a different, cleaner shot of the bridge which I’ve shown below, together with a few others from the trip..
Have you been up to much else? Motorbikes… again. The month was bookended by a couple of trips to the speedway, which is always fun. We also took a boat trip around the Isle of May - you can’t land at the moment because of bird flu - which was a good day out and one to repeat once (hopefully) the island has recovered. I’ve also been playing with infrared and a little bit of macro stuff. A selection from the month below…
Coming Up
August is looking quite busy and culminates in a trip to Mull. I’m looking forward to it…
