Wednesday 22 February 2012

Sennen


Sennen Tufts - Orange

Despite a week away in the farthest point west in the country, I had little opportunity to have some time to think about my pictures. Until literally the last, fading light at the end of the holiday. With a setting sun, an encroaching bank of cloud, I found myself on Sennen beach in Cornwall with a few minutes to grab some pictures. 

Sennen Tufts - Cyan

What to do? Play with reflections to maximise the fading light, make the most of the small amount of colour in the sky. Look for interesting shapes. Shallow depth of field to show the shapes more clearly. Subject? What to say? Look, little tufts of rope, discarded on the beach but still vibrantly coloured, still interesting, alien shapes under a grey sky and grey sands. Lower still until my knuckles touch the damp sand, closer still, make the subject clear and large, closer until the lens cannot get focus any more. Fire the shutter as focus locks. Check the image. Fail; try again, fail better. Try again and again until I’m happy or have exhausted the opportunity.

Within a few minutes I had the small set of pictures shown here, and felt satisfied that I had some pictures I would want to look at again.

Sennen Tufts - Black

I must admit that I’m really enjoying using the new G3. It’s focussing is so fast and accurate, much better than the old Nikon. It is a real advance to be able to touch the screen and pick the key point of focus for the image, rather than the focus and recompose method that I have used since my first days of photography. I sometimes use focus tracking or the new pinpoint focussing, but most times I use the basic one point touch of the screen.

The other major reason for buying the G3 is the articulated monitor on the back of the camera. With this, I can put the camera into positions and still check the composition that would be difficult or impossible without. Such as low down, on wet cold sand at the end of a grey day in February.

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