More shades of grey

by martin on Apr.03, 2014, under Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, Northumberland Coast, Photography

Our Beginners Photography workshop on Saturday had got me thinking about an aspect of photography that I’ve neglected in recent years, but one which dominated much of my photography in the late ’80s and early ’90s – black & white. Back then I spent much of my time composing, exposing, developing and printing landscapes and portraits in monochrome, but in the digital age I haven’t really given it much thought. It isn’t unusual to see discussions about the relevance of b&w in this age of intensely saturated HDR images, but it makes challenging demands of the photographer. Stripped of colour, the image relies on something else – dynamic, graphic, dramatic – to grab the attention.

So, on Monday, I drove north on the A1 in heavy fog, which thankfully thinned a bit towards the coast. After 4 hours of scrambling around Stag Rocks I composed the image that I’d pre-visualised, applied ND grad and ND filters to balance the exposure and slow the shutter speed right down and then waited for the tide 🙂