This image is all about one thing - colour.
The combination of red, white and blue is visually very attractive, just think of all the flags that use these colours, so when I saw this yacht drawn up on the beach at Llanbedrog, gleaming in the summer sun, I just couldn't walk away without photographing the scene.
The yacht's owner was just about to furl the sail and depart, but a polite request from me to take a few photos first was graciously accepted, so I went to work.
To maximise the impact of those colours I used a polarising filter to darken the blue sky, positioning myself at around 90 degrees to the sun for maximum effect.
With the sky suitably darkened I then found that my camera's metering system was over-exposing the scene, causing the bright whites on the yacht to lose all detail, so an exposure reduction of 0.7ev was required to preserve the highlights, which had the added effect of further darkening the sky.
One trick I didn't attempt on this image was to use a neutral density graduated filter to darken the sky, as that would have also unaturally affected the upper part of the yacht's sail.
Back home in PhotoShop all I had to do to complete the image was to clone out a few unsightly lumps of seaweed in the foreground and clean up the colours to emphasise the red, white and blue even more.
A real visual treat, and thanks to the yacht's owner for allowing me to take the photos in the first place.
Filename - yacht beach 02.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 35mm
Exposure - 1/100sec @ f8, ISO100
Location - Llanbedrog, Llyn Peninsula, Wales
This image - 450x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS6
Comments - Polarising filter used to darken sky.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.