Seascapes at sunset

Eric Gregory shares his longexposure tips as he smooths the waves at Kimmeridge Bay

1 Where to shoot

The shoreline rocks and waves are ideal for long-exposure shots. While you certainly wouldn’t call it ‘extreme photography’, you do need to pick your way carefully to the shoreline. Take a sturdy backpack with a tripod clip to keep both hands free. Thanks to Anthony Blake for guiding me here.

2 When to shoot

This was shot some 30 minutes before sunset, in early November last year, with an incoming tide and (for once) perfect weather and some clouds on the horizon making my job a lot easier. Refer to tide tables and photo apps (such as PhotoPills) to plan your outing: you don’t want to arrive and find a featureless stretch of sand!

3 Set up your gear

I used my trusty Nikon D5600 and a Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 wide-angle lens to capture both the foreground rocks and the headland – which provides a strong focal point – together with a sturdy ball head tripod, ND and grad ND filters, a remote cable release, and a viewfinder cap to block extraneous light.

4 Stronger compositions

I framed this with the foreground rocks emerging from one corner of the image, and the favoured landscape ‘rule of thirds’. The sunset afterglow lit the clouds on the horizon. While long exposures can elicit contrasting views, I like their soft, ethereal look.

5 Shoot your image

I used Live View to compose and align the image, and locked manual focus on the foreground rocks, reviewing the shot and exposure via the histogram. A combination of ND and grad ND filters created the long exposure and balanced the sky respectively, and I calculated the filtered exposure time using a smartphone app.