With so many beautiful sights around Dominican Republic’s resort areas, it seemed like a “gimme” in my attempt to catch a surreal yet minimal long exposure photograph of a dock. Add a little touch of long exposure and the amazing blue water flattens out to make an almost abstract picture. Off to the left of this long exposure dock picture you can see a large thunderstorm pouring down. I’m not completely happy about the way the dock doesn’t have perfect symmetry because it makes it appear as though the camera is off balance, but it’s not. You can see that the horizon is close to perfectly level, so the dock must have been a little off. I guess that makes for a more interesting image anyway!
What was in my bag?
- Canon 60d
- Wide Angle Lens
- Neutral Density Filters
- Polarizing Filter
- Gorilla Tripod
How I took this picture
I didn’t have my normal sized tripod with me for this picture, which was a big downside, because my Gorilla Tripod was quite wobbly on the dock and was tough to set up with my heavy wide angle lens. All I did for this picture was stack a Polarizer and a couple of ND filters on my lens. Neutral Density filters allow you to slow down your shutter speed in bright conditions so you can capture movement and make water smooth out. The picture was taken at about 6 seconds at F/25, which is a very large depth of field. I used an f/25 so I could capture the rainstorm in the distance as well as any other detail (clouds) in the distance. I also rotated the Polarizing filter until the color and water reflection were both what I wanted.
Camera Settings
- f/25
- ISO 100
- 6 Second Exposure
- 15mm Focal Length
Leave a Reply