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Dunluce Photographer
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My buddy was climbing around the hills at Dunluce Castle. A bit too much sky in this one, maybe? And my sky lost all its colour (is this because I was at wide open aperture? I was reading Understanding Exposure the other day, and if I recall he was saying you should stop right down for landscape shots)
I think you’re right about the sky, but stopping down the aperture in landscapes would be for the sake of greater depth of field rather than a darker exposure – if you’re not shooting in manual by setting a smaller aperture it will compensate with a longer shutter speed and you’ll end up with the same exposure, if you underexpose slightly it can help to bring out the colours a bit stronger. The problem with that here is that the castle is quite dark and another stop or two for the sake of bringing the tone of the sky down would make it difficult to make out the details in the wall. It’s also correctly exposed for the sea (to my untrained eye ;) ) so the only option here would be a graduated filter to bring the brightness of the sky down, or blending two exposures – one for the sky and one for the foreground. But that’s beyond the effort I’m prepared to go to, usually! I think with this shot, because it is a fairly bland sky, you’re better just to exclude it altogether and concentrate on the land and the ruin. I think this shot works if I move the sky off the screen to just about 2cm from the horizon.
I do like this picture though, mostly because the wee person gives you a sense of scale. On a hazy sunny day it’s pretty difficult to get anything more artistic… it might convert to bw well too, I think that always looks good on old ruins. If you do convert it to bw it would be worth burning in the foreground right at the front, because bright areas on the edge of the picture always seem to draw your eye and stop you exploring the whole scene so easily, I find. Just my humble opinion…
Yep, ND filter, but the sky is indeed bland so it wouldn’t do a huge amount for it in this case.
ND filters are a must for landscape if you want to hold back the sky.
A couple magic ratio (1.618:1) crops (and also straightened the horizon, even though it’s not technically IN the skyless shot)…
A little bit of sky (and more castle):
No sky at all (but less castle):
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