The weather has been fantastic recently, although the skies were a bit bland for any exciting photography. Clear blue skies whilst nice for walks and days out are just not as exciting as those filled with wispy or fluffy clouds. This combined with numerous PC problems meant I hadn't gotten out much, but last night I was finally able to fit in a trip to the South Downs.

I started my journey by visiting a new location I've been working on up behind Alfriston. I arrived at about 7:45pm and the sun was just starting to produce the low golden light that I was looking for. My goal was to capture the rolling landscape bathed in the warm light. I ended up trekking up hill towards the South Downs way before finding a spot that seemed to work. After spending some time with a couple of compositions I wasn't that enthused by the shots I was taking.

Instead I decided to revisit a location on Windover Hill by the Long Man to capture the sunset in the distance behind Firle Beacon. I arrived as the sun was rapidly sinking and had to move fast to start the walk up the hillside. After passing through the first gate I spotted an old piece of farm machinery next to the path. It had been there for a long time as it was a nice rusty colour and somehow I’d never really taken it in before. The sun was perfectly placed behind the plough and the opportunity was too good to miss.

I was using my trusty 17-40mm lens on the 1D MkIIN with mirror lockup and shutter release. As a side I really need to replace the shutter release cable as the wire must be damaged since it only fires when held at specific angles. Initially I fitted a Cokin P121 ND Grad filter hoping to hold back the bright sun to retain some foreground details. It was however not enough to balance the exposure and since I’ve not had good results by stacking filters I decided to instead go for bracketed exposures instead.

This process required a bit more work to get it right and more processing afterwards to combine the exposures but it is much better at handling greater extremes of exposure. I removed the ND Grad filter and whilst working AV priority at F/14 I went about making a number of exposures of the scene, adjusting the exposure compensation by 2/3s of a stop each time. After completing 5 or 6 frames I moved onto the next composition.

Having had a quick review of the shots this morning I think I’ve got one workable sequence that looks pretty good. I’ll need to spend some time processing the RAW files and merging the exposures to complete the photograph.

After capturing the sunset I waited a few minutes to see if the sky would provide any further excitement but it was obviously not in the mood so I packed up and set off for home. Passing the Long Man through Wilmington village I spotted an unusual scene which I had to shoot. The nearly full moon was out and up behind the hillside in the perfect spot to capture with the Long Man. Since it was only a few minutes after sunset there was enough light to capture the scene with a long exposure.

I parked up at the car park and jogged onto the Long Man path looking for a spot to set up the tripod. I didn’t have time to fully close in on the Long Man so I picked a spot very close to where I was shooting a sunrise a month or so ago. Again I needed to bracket the shots to capture some foreground detail whilst retaining detail in the moon. Having reviewed the shots I’m not sure I underexposed quite enough but since I work in RAW I have some latitude for correction. For my foreground detail shots I was shooting at 2 seconds to capture enough light. I think the shot may work but if the composition is not right I’ll certainly consider returning sometime soon to try a re-shoot, perhaps when it’s actually a full moon behind. I can’t recall ever seeing this scene at dusk or night so I’m quite driven to try and photograph it.

I’ll try to update this blog with some of the final shots once they’re processed. Until then remember to put the 24^th June in your calendar as I’ll be exhibiting around 24 photographs at Eastbourne Framing Centre on the corner of Grove Road and Terminus road, by the mini roundabout and Eastbourne library. I hope to see you there.

I have added some more of my Long Man of Wilmington photographs to the South Downs Gallery.

The Long Man of Wilmington at Dawn

I've been wanting to try some dawn shots of the Long Man of Wilmington for a long time and last night I made the decision to get up extra early and head along the A27 to capture some photographs.

The Long Man of Wilmington is a landmark located on the South Downs near the small village of Wilmington on Windover Hill. Visible from the A27 this giant outline of a man with poles can be seen from quite a distance. I parked up at the nearby car park at about 5:50am and set off with the 1D MKIIN and 17-40mm lens. My plan was to capture the Long Man with the first golden light from the rising sun adding dynamic shape to the hills and foreground. Initially the sun was a bit low and the light was quite flat and unexciting but as I worked my way along the walking path towards the Long Man the sun started to rise and light up the landscape. I picked a few locations along the way that contained good foreground interest and hopefully were a bit different from the shots you tend to see day to day. Early on the cloud cover was at about 50% and I had to do a fair bit of waiting around while the clouds blew through. When the sun was free to shine it was great light and lit up the hillside just as I'd hoped.

As always with my landscape shots I used my Manfrotto tripod as support and a shutter release cable to further reduce the chances of blurring the shot with camera shake. I also enabled mirror lockup under the custom functions which again is worth doing for static landscape photography. I set my camera to manual mode and opted for an aperture of around F/16 for a good depth of field. Early on my shutter speed was around 1/5th of a second but as the sun rose higher I was up to around 1/25th. In order to control the exposure of foreground and sky I tried two techniques. Firstly I used no filter and simply bracketed my shots. This allows the exposures to later be merged in Photoshop to produce a balanced exposure. This requires some manual work and also the foreground flowers were blowing in the wind which was likely to make merging the exposures a real pain. My next method was to attach one of my Cokin ND Graduated filters to the lens which I then aligned with the hill top to allow less light from the sky onto the sensor. This meant I could expose for the foreground and not worry about blowing out the brighter sky. This teachnique can work well, although my results with it have been mixed. On this occasion it seemed to work pretty well and that's good news as it saves me a chunk on post processing time at home.

I'll be processing the shots as soon as possible and will upload them when I get the chance. For now here is one of the shots I that I feel came together pretty well. I used a low angle to capture the water trough in the foreground. I like to try and keep some interest in that section of the frame to keep the viewer interested. It also sets the scene of a rural area quite nicely.

The Long Man of Wilmington at Dawn