A black and white photograph of a boat marooned on the beach at North Cove, Washington.
EXIF: Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z 24-70/4 S lens, ISO 64, 24 mm, f8, 1/400 second. Edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop.
The Story Behind the Photograph.
Because of the Covid-19 lockdown, it had been several months of not getting out to shoot landscape photography. Even though I live in a sparsely populated region of Washington state, I wanted to respect the governing rules of the pandemic. Besides, I am utilizing the time for home improvement projects.
Instead of our usual walking route in town, my wife and I decided to make the 35-minute drive to North Cove to take a walk on the beach.
I love this small section of the Washington coast because it lacks the commercialization of the more popular areas. Because of limited vehicle access, it’s as close to a wild beach you can find in Southwest Washington.
When we made it out onto the beach, I noticed a marooned boat down the beach. We eventually made it down to the location of the boat, walked around it, looked inside, and wondered what might have happened (as most of us would do).
About the Image Creation.
Unless there are fantastic meteorological conditions in the sky or high surf conditions, bare sandy beaches usually don’t excite me creatively. That is unless there is an interest foreground feature that I can include in the image. That’s where this boat came into play.
My usual approach to photographing a subject is to view all the possible angles. I’ll take various photos from each perspective until I settle on a composition I like.
With this composition, though it was mid-day, there was just enough diffused sunlight, so the shadows would still retain some detail, and the highlights wouldn’t blow out.
The above image turned out to be my favorite of the photos collected that day.
From a composition perspective, I liked to following aspects of this image:
- the sun was out of frame, high to the left;
- there was dark, contrasting shadow on the camera side of the boat;
- the camera position was on the port/starboard side of the boat, with the bow pointing down the beach;
- there is open space to the right of the boat;
- the high wispy clouds with blue skies.
Most of my editing, including the black and white conversion, happened in Adobe Lightroom Classic. My only trip into Photoshop was to remove some unwanted items in the frame (it’s much easier to do it on-site, but we all can get tunnel vision).
It was nice to get a few clicks in.
You can view more of my fine art photography at SteveBisigPhotography.com
