Passing cloud

What’s the effect? When you have clouds moving in the right direction, why not use them creatively, as in this image of Reine, Norway? In this picture, the clouds appear to be emanating from the mountain peak.

The reflection of the mountain in the water was very good – that was, until the fishing boats decided to cut right through the middle of it. This isn’t a problem during a really long exposure, though, as the boats don’t get recorded and the water has time to smooth out, creating a perfect reflection. Even if you are photographing a busy street scene with people walking through your image, they will disappear during an exposure lasting several minutes.

What’s the time? Once again, I used my Lee Big Stopper here, along with my Lee landscape polarising filter to achieve the long exposure. I had to stop the lens down to f/22 in order to get an exposure of 4 mins. The polariser darkened the blue sky, giving separation to the clouds. I used a soft-edge two-stop ND grad over the sky, bringing it down into the mountain. The soft-edge ND grad is ideal with uneven horizons such as massive pointy mountains.