For the Love of Sand

In the UK we are in the middle of a pollen bomb caused by an explosion of gross after the long wet spring. As a long term allergy sufferer I have taken to going out very early for my photography practice. This morning wandered down to my local beach at Westward Ho!

I was planning on photographing the gulls and other sea birds that normally occupy the beach in the mornings so I took along my Fuji 70-300mm zoom lens. Turns out that the birds had other ideas, either that or it was too early for them!

Rather than waste the beautiful morning light I took a bimble along the super long beach. High tide had been an hour or set earlier so the sea was receding and leaving some really interesting sand ripples as well as the usual collection of shells and other debris. The sun had cleared the pebble ridge and was delivering some excellent side lighting.

The zoom lens turned out to be just the ticket for exploring the myriad different patterns and I managed to get into a flow state for a good hour or so.

Getting the exposure right was tricky because there was a very high dynamic range caused by the sun reflecting off the wet sand. Even with 3 stops of negative exposure compensation I was still getting blown highlights so I switched to full manual and manually dialled in the aperture and shutter speed needed.

The next challenge was editing, I felt that the auto white balance from the camera didn’t reflect the light that I remembered, rendering the images almost black and white so increased WB to daylight used the tone curve to boost the top end and make the sand sparkle a little more. Switching to a square crop emphasised the calm feel that I wanted from the abstracts.