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Under cloudless skies, photographing into the sun isn't recommended for a range of technical, artistic and safety reasons (arrh - my eyes, my eyes!).
But on this occasion, overlooking the Menai Straits from Caernarfon's Victoria Docks on the North Wales coast, I was able to get away with it thanks to a layer of high cloud taking the edge of the sun's brightness.
Mind, you, I still had to take precautions framing and taking this photo to avoid retina burn and potential damage to the camera's sensor (although I've never had a problem with this yet).
To take this shot I first of all fitted a 6 stop neutral density filter over my lens to cut down the overall light levels, followed by a three stop ND grad filter to further darken the sky.
I then used the Canon 6D's live view facility to frame this shot, rather than looking directly at the scene through the viewfinder.
Finally I underexposed the scene considerably to retain highlight detail.
But why bother taking this photo in the first place, let alone going to all that trouble to achieve the shot?
Well I was really taken with the dramatic lighting, the glowing striated clouds, the sun's disk, the shining path of light on the sea and the treeline on the shores of Anglesey on the other side of the Straits, rendered as a pure black silhouette against the bright sky.
By no means a 'normal' landscape image (whatever that may be!), but one that, as I study it, still engenders in me a feeling of wonder as I recall the beautiful conditions that late afternoon by the Menai Straits.
Filename - clouds sun sea 03.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 105mm
Exposure - 1/400 sec @ f8, ISO100
Location - Menai Straits at Caernarfon, North Wales
This image - 533x800px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - ND filters used to reduce light levels
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