A Mumbles Meander

It’s always nice to be able to visit somewhere new and have the opportunity to put new techniques to work. My family and I travelled over to the Gower Peninsula, a place famous for its beauty, not least its beaches, and the Mumbles. I thought then, as a first blog post I’d take the opportunity to review some of the photos I’ve taken, and talk about what I tried to achieve, what worked (and what didn’t), as well as some lessons learnt.

I think perhaps one of the first things I should mention, is that a lot of these photos may have been shot with slightly distorted settings at first glance - at the same time as shooting stills, I was also filming a video of my family on their holiday. I spent our time away with a variable ND filter attached to the front of my lens (Sigma 24-35 F2), which adds two stops at its base level, so there was some compensation with my settings to accommodate this.

It was also generally a very grey few days, and our visit to the Mumbles was perhaps the most overcast, but I do like the way a lot of the images have turned out.

Mumbles Lighthouse
35mm | ISO 250 | F5.6 | 1/320 sec

I waited an inordinate amount of time for a bird to appear where I wanted it, much to my family’s chagrin! My patience paid in the end however, with this little fellow making his way across the image. I love that it gives the lighthouse some balance, and adds a little more nature. I generally try not to get too much foreground in my images when it’s something as flat as lifeless as a rocky beach, preferring to include more sky; it feels more natural and congruous with the way we view the world ourselves. I don’t (or at least I try not to) walk with my head pointing at the ground.

Working on the thirds in this image, up and down as well as left to right. Love the balance. I’ve also tried to be slightly restrained with the colour too: it was a grey day yes, but equally, it’s an old lighthouse, and I feel like the slightly muted feel gives it a little more age. I’ve tried too to keep the contrast of the orange in the beach against the blue in the sea/sky. Overall, really like this image.

Oystermouth Castle in the fog
145mm | ISO 250 | F8 | 1/320 sec

Next up is an image that, if I’m honest, I’ve struggled to like. I’ve included it in this post because I want to share the rough with the smooth. I’ve pulled in either too tight on this image, or not tight enough. I didn’t really get the right feel at either end while taking the picture, it felt too busy, too full. What are we looking at here? I generally like images that have a simple subject and perhaps some supporting characters, but something like this is too much.

145mm leaves the framing of this image wanting. I wish I’d seen as I was taking it that I was cutting a digger off in the bottom left, especially when they’re the only real pop of colour in the image and ones’ eye is drawn to it. I should have pulled out further and included the digger, or cropped in tighter and reframed the castle, though cropping in post highlights how much is taken away from the image in doing so. Pulling out further loses some of the clarity in the castle being the subject of the photo. I think if I had perhaps been able to reposition myself so as to avoid the digger in the bottom left, this could have turned out to be a more acceptable image.

Mumbles Pier
70mm | ISO 250 | F8 | 1/500 sec

I find this image a little more agreeable, though I nearly didn’t include it for editing. I was having my sleeve tugged by a small child at the time of shooting, and I wish I’d been able to wait for the three people on the beach to move around into the bottom third of the image to balance it out. I also don’t like the two-tone foreground, though I don’t think I could have cropped in any further without taking out some of the pier. I think the three people moving into the bottom third would have probably solved this. Patience is definitely a big lesson I’ve taken away, but of course it’s a delicate balance when one is trying to be a father at the same time!

Looking back at these now, I also realise I really like the fact it was such an overcast day. With the lack of clouds in the sky, there is little to distract from the main focus of the images. Indeed this is not too dissimilar to someone like James Popsys who likes to blow out his skies in order to bring the focus back to his subjects (more on that later).

I wonder if there is too much distraction on the right hand side of the image on this one as well, though I wouldn’t like to crop in further as I think the pier needs the room on the left hand side. It could have perhaps had a little more, could/should this have been shot on a 50mm lens rather than my 70-200mm? It might have given a little more to work with and refine, and perhaps also shown the scale of the pier?

Boat On The Water
70mm | ISO 250 | F8 | 1/500 sec

Looking at the settings on this, I probably could have given a little on the shutter speed so I could move the ISO down a touch, but this wouldn’t really have altered the image too much from where it is. I think often we get too caught up in the camera settings, the science of shooting the image, rather than observing what’s in front of us. In my case, it’s clearly a boat.

I’d set out on this day to try and put in to practice some learning and research I had done on James Popsys. I really like his blown out skies, something I otherwise try and get the most of, and the simplicity of his images. That said, I feel like simplicity comes across as a derogatory term, but his ability to distil an image down to one or a handful of subjects and remove the noise is delightful. I also love the punch in colour and lighting his images have. With all that in mind, I tried, not altogether successfully throughout the day, to capture some of this, with this image of the boat being a particular highlight.

I wish though, that the boat was any other colour than blue, it would have been so much more punchy. I appreciate I could have altered the colour in post, but that’s not the way I work. I want to document, perhaps at times through slightly rose-tinted lenses, what I actually saw, not a distorted reflection of the truth.

Otherwise, I like this last image, it sums up the day quite well.