Photography was in order after at a friends wedding in Thailand, so we took some long overdue R&R and headed out to explore the karsts (and beaches) of the Andaman Sea.

This was taken on Ko Phi Phi Lee’s Maya Bay — made famous long ago by the film adaptation of Alex Garland’s The Beach.

It is a stunning slice of sand though, and if you hire a local to take you out there on a longtail boat and time it right between the tours, you can have it (almost) to yourself.

f29

© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

Inside the ruins of Ayutthaya’s Wat Mahatat I came across this ruined status of the Buddha.

Long since destroyed by an invading Burmese army, it’s still dressed and adorned in offerings (wai phra) from visiting pilgrims.

The bright orange of the robes and the flower offerings against the charred black soot of the statue’s arms and leg made for interesting color contrast.

f29

© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

An ongoing quip in the film versus digital debate is that ‘ film makes you think’.

Which implies that the byproduct of shooting digitally and free of film’s resource constraints reduces or hampers creativity.

A medium does not make you creative

The low shot storage capacity of film versus ever increasing memory card storage no doubt gives you more reasons to be conscious of action and intent — you’re using a finite resource.

What i don’t buy is that taking less shots makes a better photographer or produces better images.

Is a watercolour artist more (or less) creative than an oil painter? It is not the medium that makes you creative, it’s how you apply of the tools.

Provided there is intent in making an image, then I have no problem making lots of images in it’s pursuit, even if they are of the same composition.

In fact you can use it to good effect.

Make lots and lots of (thought through) shots

Once I’ve centered on a composition I tend to progressively make minor alterations until I reach an envisaged effect. This works especially well with water (seascapes and waterfalls) and rapidly changing weather fronts.

There are details in the landscape than one can envisage, but that present themselves so fleetingly capturing them takes an element of luck — and you can increase that luck by increasing your shot count.

Trail & Error

This shot was the product of 21 shots of the same composition tinkering with various shutter speeds until I caught the right level of movement in the clouds.

My initial start point was 5 secs – aimed at creating mist from the incoming tide – but then the light changed as the storm front cleared i progressively increased it.

Sunset over the Brissons | Cot Valley, Cornwall

Several exposures later I’d found a shutter speed that didn’t capture too much cloud movement — resulting in too exaggerated a blur / streaks. Or captured too little — which didn’t achieve the desired motion in the clouds to act as a diagonal lead in to draw the eye toward the sea stacks.

Knowing the right exposure to achieve this in a single frame, or even a few wouldn’t have been possible. I needed to experiment.

Unexpected movements

There are interactions of light and land that are so subtle and are impossible to predict no matter how much time we spend in the landscape trying to tame it.

I spent 3 days in this gorge tinkering around in varying spots in the river trying to create a pleasing composition.

rivendell | elowah falls

Flat overcast skies helped control the contrast, but robbed the scene of any definition. During a sequence of exposures, unexpectedly a small gap in the clouds flew overhead and the sun poured into the gorge side-lighting the rocks and providing nice definition to the scene.

I could see small breaks on the clouds, but predicting the moment it pour into the gorge was tricky. Taking numerous exposures allowed me to compensate for this and ensure I caught the moment it did break as i saw it in my minds eye.

Luxury is not laziness

I see no reason to be ashamed by the luxury that digital memory affords us.

We should use it to explore the nuances of a scene or our camera settings within a desired composition to find that frame that achieves our aim / visualisation.

When used with fast-moving and constantly changing subjects such as a waterfalls or storm fronts, the technique can capture nuances that would be missed otherwise in a few exposures of that scene.

With water, even with a single shutter speed, each of your frames could be unique.

Not spray and pray

Some might decry this as a shoot and pray technique.

I’m the first to agree that we should all think more before clicking the shutter. And I wouldn’t support utilising GBs of data storage to aimlessly point and shoot with no thought for the subject, lighting or composition in the hope of a eureka moment.

But if we have thought our shot through, using multiple exposures to help achieve that shot shouldn’t be frowned upon.

Your simply using the tools you have to achieve what you want.

f29

Took an impromptu trip to one of my favourite locations last weekend to try and catch some autumn colors.

The extremely mild October has stalled the peak color by a few weeks, could be mid-November this year unless we get a cold snap — but there were a few red flecks of leaves around the moss carpeted boulders to contrast the verdant greens.

autumnal veil | yorkshire

With each trip I’ve seen a different side to the falls (this would be my 4th), and each time I’ve found more potential in the location

This trips the first time the falls flow and wind direction in the gorge have both been low enough to allow me this close to the falls.

f29

Another exposure from Cornwall’s Coombe Valley.

This particular stretch of beach is littered with long fingers of rock, that at certain times of the year, angle themselves directly into the sunset making for cracking foreground fodder.

Coombe ledges | Coombe Valley, Cornwall

f29

After a long walk down the South West Coastal path, came across this cliff face, riddles with pock marks of slate mining.

The cliff here has been weathered as much by the hand of man as the Atlantic. The huge pillar of rock in the upper left of the frame a man-made feature, left over from the days of the Cornish slate trade.

Quarried cove | Cornwall

It was an overcast day, and usually i keep these days for location research, but the muted light, the gun metal colour of the rock coated in the morning’s rain and the way the foreground rocks mirroring the jagged lines of the cove below kept me there for about an hour.

f29

For about a year i’ve had this shot in mind thanks to some lost hours on the Photographer’s Ephemeris (a highly recommended for any shoot planning), and been thwarted twice in 2 years.

Sunset over the Brissons | Cot Valley, Cornwall

This time nature played ball.

Maybe it was luck, but as Arnold Palmer said “the more i practice, the luckier i get”.

Often the worst weather can offer the best light and on this night that held true. The quality light here in Cornwall is so unpredictable, it changes so rapidly, and when weather fronts blow in off the Atlantic, it can really deliver some amazing displays of tone, mood and colour.

f29

Taken on a wind battered, rainy day, it was a miracle i managed to get any shots that weren’t covered in sea spray or blurry — I was happy to retreat to the warmth of the B&B after this.

Atlantic Mist | Coombe Valley, Cornwall

The light in Cornwall in Autumn is immense.

So changeable, and inclement. In the 15 mins before this exposure was made, the sky went from cloudless, to totally overcast, to broody, then finally as the sun set, the splinters of colour you see here sprang into view on the cloud’s edges.

f29

En route to Sol Duc falls is a beautiful mossy boulder lined creek that extends up a steep cliff deep into the rainforest.

sol duc creek | Olympic National Park

It offers far more photogenic potential than the actual falls.

The creek tumbles steeply down the forests side, through endless micro falls, channelled round moss green boulders, fallen decaying trees and around the carpeted rocks.

f29

© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.

One of my favourite features in the Hoh rainforest were the ‘nurse logs’

As the giant firs die off, their stumps and shell like carcasses provide falling seedlings with a much needed fertile base and support to grow. They effectively become a giant growbag.

Seedlings often take root inside the fir’s skeleton, free from the intense competition on the dense moss carpet of the rainforest, and they utilise the decaying treetrunk like mulch. The fir in death, gives the saplings a chance at life. Nice and circle of life-ish.

Ambling around the Hoh Rainforest, I came across this small sapling growing out of a giant long dead fir stump — it’s hard to tell scale here, but the stump is little over 12ft high. For me, it came to epitomise the cycle of life and death in the rainforest.

f29

© Copyright Paul Marsden. All rights reserved.