Geophoto: the coast
It’s the time of year when Brits head to the seaside. Here’s what you need to know to make the best of the photography on offer, says Keith Wilson
The summer months mark the time when Britons make an exodus to the coast, marking out a section of beach with windbreakers and towels to soak up the longed-for sunshine. The sight of the wave-crested sea stretching to the horizon has a powerful effect on our senses and imagination.
From a photographic perspective, the coast provides an enormous range of possibilities for landscape images, depending upon the characteristics of the local geography. Studying Ordnance Survey or geological maps gives important clues about the variable topography of coastal shores: chalk cliffs are usually brilliant white with stacks of fallen boulders at their base; sandstones have a warmer colour palette of crumbly orange and yellow; river estuaries are home to dark, sticky and impassable mudflats, while the hard, granite strewn beaches are best for the low tide rock pool homes of crabs and starfish.
The best way to explore an unfamiliar shore is to take a relaxing beach walk while looking out for other compositional elements that add interest to the landscape. For instance, small fishing villages are shielded from ocean currents and storms by formidable sea walls, while lighthouses stand steadfast above the crashing waves. The placement and construction of these features convey much about the nature of a stretch of coast and man’s relationship with it. Look out for natural features too, such as sea stacks or arches, to provide an obvious focal point when framing a coastal landscape. Such features are marked on local maps, which can help to locate best vantage points for photography.
TIME AND TIDE
As well as that first walk to familiarise yourself with your location, there are several other factors to consider before contemplating a picture. First, pinpoint your location on a local map to see the direction you are facing when looking out to sea. This is particularly important where a stretch of coast, such as those on the Atlantic shores of Scotland, Pembroke and Cornwall,
are sprinkled with inlets, coves and jagged promontories, all facing different directions. Deciding the best time of day for the light will depend largely on the direction of your chosen subject. Another factor that plays a large part in choosing your time and place – and one that is unique to coastal landscapes – is the tide. Local tide tables give a day-by-day list of high and low tide times throughout the year. A copy of these tables is extremely useful for forward planning as high and low water marks can vary substantially in a 24-hour period. Low tide allows the photographer access to a shore that is otherwise submerged, thereby revealing other subject matter, such as a large rock, or reflective pool.
Finally, there is the weather forecast. Coastal climates are incredibly fickle and can be totally different to the weather experienced a few miles inland. Wind is a more serious consideration too.
Even on a day when the sea is like a millpond, an approaching weather front is usually preceded by blustery winds and gathering clouds out to sea. Taking all these factors into account, the ideal conditions for a coastal landscape are a day when low tide coincides with the warm, low-angled light of dawn or dusk, shining directly onto your view.
LIGHT CONTROL
As an archipelago of several thousand islands, islets and rock stacks, the British Isles has one of the world’s most extensive coastlines with beaches of all geological types and forms. But whether fine sand or coarse shingle, beaches are locations where light abounds.
The harsh sunlight of a cloud-free summer’s day and hazy atmosphere is not ideal for making images of startling clarity and colour. Added to this is the intensity of glare caused by sunlight reflecting from the rippling seas. Such bright, dynamic light will challenge any camera’s metering system and stretch the HDR (high dynamic range) to the limit of its capability.
In such conditions, many experienced landscape photographers prefer to make a spot meter reading from an ‘average’ mid-tone to calibrate their readings. Comparable surfaces that reflect light as
a natural mid-tone include grass, coarse grey rock, and flesh tones. So, you could always take a spot reading from the back of your hand, hold that value by pressing the auto-exposure lock, and then recompose the scene accordingly. It is also advisable to bracket your exposures around this value so that you have some shots over and under your new ‘correct’ exposure.
Photographing highly reflective surfaces such as water and wet shores will also necessitate the use of a polarising filter, unless there is enough low-lying cloud to diffuse the sunlight and reduce contrast levels. Polarisers help to emphasise any trace of clouds and saturate the blue of the sky. But of greater use is the filter’s ability to cut out glare and reflections from the water’s surface. This is particularly useful when you wish to photograph something just beneath the water’s surface, such as a starfish in a rock pool.
SLOPING HORIZONS
Another filter commonly used for coastal photography and seascapes is the neutral density graduate, commonly referred to as the ND grad. As its name suggests, this has a graduated tint density of neutral grey on one half of the filter, for the photographer to place over the brightest part of the scene. This way, the contrast range is reduced without altering any of the colour effects for an accurately exposed image across the whole of the frame. ND grads are available in differing densities: 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9, equating to one, two and three stops of exposure. These should be chosen according to the degree of contrast in the lighting conditions, so the greater the contrast the higher the ND grad filter used to help balance the exposure.
The design of ND grads, with one half of the filter tinted and the other half clear, makes them ideal to use against the sky above the horizon, when looking out to sea. Keeping the horizon straight is a compositional challenge too, so the line separating the two halves of this filter can almost act like a grid to align along the horizon, thereby keeping it level across the frame.
Of course, handholding the camera is not an option in this situation as it leaves everything to chance and invariably results in a photo with a sloping horizon. The only sure way to avoid this is by using your camera on a tripod. Some models feature built-in spirit levels to help keep a level plate for your camera when fixed in place. Some cameras have electronic grid screens in their viewfinders to also aid a level alignment with the horizon.
PIERS AND GULLS
With so much focus on the sea and the horizon, it helps to be mindful of other compositional elements that can provide additional interest to an ocean view. Piers and jetties are a welcome distraction and add detail and depth to the otherwise two-dimensional layers of sand, shoreline, sea, horizon and sky. By including a pier stretching directly out to sea, a diagonal vector is added to the scene to give depth to the view, as well as a lead-in line into the rest of the frame. Pleasure piers also provide plenty of other picture ideas, an opportunity to move from seascape and views to social photography and reportage.
At this time of year, thousands of visitors are drawn to the promise of refreshments and entertainment, so training your camera on scenes that show people enjoying the local pier will provide a colourful collection of candid images. As well as piers, beach resorts are home to other distinct architecture such as harbour walls and breakwaters, possibly a lighthouse, while fishing boats offer vibrant focal points of colour and shape to the coastal landscape.
Of course, where there are seaside resorts you will also encounter squadrons of predatory seagulls ready to attack an unguarded wrap of fish and chips. For many people, this is their sole experience of the animals to be seen in this dynamic environment where land and sea merge and never remain still. And yet, you do not have to be a scuba diver with an underwater camera to photograph marine life. Rock pools provide a fascinating opportunity to photograph small marine creatures confined in a small yet clear body of water that can be easily framed in the viewfinder by standing overhead or moving closer to the water line. There are plenty of waterproof compact cameras on the market, which are ideal for working in this environment, but if your camera isn’t so designed, inexpensive waterproof housings are available to fit most makes of compact cameras and DSLRs.
SEABIRDS ABOVE, WHALES BELOW
Apart from ever-present gulls, it’s worth looking out for other seabirds. Britain’s rockier stretches of shoreline and sea cliffs provide the perfect habitat for colonies of nesting gannets, guillemots and terns, and summer is the peak breeding season. Seabird colonies are raucous habitats with hundreds of birds to be seen nesting close to your feet or flying overhead. It’s important to keep your camera gear well covered when not in use, and also to protect your own head from low-flying guano, by wearing a broad-brimmed hat!
In recent years, more people have made the effort to see whales and dolphins during their summer holidays, either by visiting a coastal promontory renowned for spotting these magnificent creatures, or by joining a whale-watching boat trip for the day. One of the best viewpoints in Britain is the Moray Firth in northern Scotland, home to a wild population of around 130 dolphins and harbour porpoises. Sightings peak from June to September, when the animals feed on wild salmon swimming in and out of the River Ness and other tributaries. During summer, the dolphins swim closest to shore during high tides, providing photographers with a superb vantage point. Minke whale have also been spotted in these waters from March to October. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) has two centres open to the public either side of the Moray Firth – at North Kessock and Spey Bay – which command great views of the firth and any dolphins or whales breaching the surface.
For a successful photographic outing, use a long telephoto or zoom lens with enough magnification to enable a tight crop of your subject. To ensure the fastest possible shutter speed, set your camera to aperture priority and select the widest aperture. Raising the ISO value will also result in a faster shutter speed. A wide aperture reduces depth of field, but so long as your subject is sharply focused it will stand out even more against a defocused background. There can’t be many better sights from a coastal shore to make this summer one to remember.