Fresh Ground Photography

Christmas Eve Experiments

It’s been a rather wet and gloomy festive season to be honest (Merry Christmas to you, by the way) but I did manage to nip out to Newgale beach on the far west coast of Pembrokeshire to see my daughters on Christmas Eve. It was a dark and stormy day with some big waves. I had my Canon M6 with me with its 18-55mm lens so I knew I wouldn’t be taking dramatic surf shots.

I find it a challenge to convey the emotion and power of a large beach with a camera, especially a small one with a wide-angle lens. My first instinct that day was to get some foreground interest in order to frame the scene. This small fence was good but I feel that it overcomplicates the image. This was shot at 24mm, 1/160s and f/8. The ISO was 200. I could have increased the exposure in Lightroom later but that wouldn’t have been true to the picture that I took: that is how the day actually looked.

I wrote in an earlier post that I liked the abstract images of Mark Rothko, and here I tried once more to achieve the parallel layers of some of his images using pebbles, sand sea and sky … but the picture just doesn’t work. There is too much detail in the frame, it’s too fussy, and I just haven’t captured it to my liking. I didn’t want to change the image in post-processing, I’ve nothing against doing that, but I feel that in this case I’d be fixing an image that didn’t quite work. But I will keep trying, look out for posts to come.

The image that I like most from Christmas Eve was this one, taken obliquely along the stretch of sand with some detail in the foreground. I like the foreboding sky and the oppressive colours in the image … and that is how it felt on the day. The camera settings are the same as before (ISO 200, f/8 and 1/160s) with a wide, 24mm, focal length to encompass the whole scene.

It was lovely to meet with my daughters and their partners, of course, but I also enjoyed experimenting with composition. I do get things wrong more often than not but that’s ok, I enjoy the process. I enjoy learning.

Skip to content