This was shot on the New Jersey coast. Right at the Barnegat Lighthouse in Barnegat Lighthouse State Park in fact. There is a walkway leading from the shore up to the lighthouse. I was shooting with my Nikon D70. I set the camera on my Manfrotto tripod about in the middle of the walkway and pointed the camera down at the rocks. When at the lighthouse, I noticed waves occasionally crashing up against the rocks and onto the walkway so I thought I would go down to capture that natural motion. The ocean waves would flow in slowly sometimes and just cover the rocks a little and other times they would come crashing in and completely cover everything. I knew I needed a long exposure for the effect I wanted, which was to show some of the rock, but mostly the swirling water and splashing wave. To get the right effect, I waited until after the sun had set and it was beginning to get dark out.
I shot several, which in this case I think is needed because of the inconsistency of each wave. You can't really set up, take one shot and hope that you got what you needed. I took shots at various shutter speeds and even different angles and different rocks. The large flat rock almost in the center is the one that caught most of my attention. On some waves it would get completely covered so you couldn't see it anymore and on others the water would just slightly wash over it. Between the different shutter speeds used and the different intensity of each wave, I got several different effects.
In this case it was a 2 second exposure with the ISO set at 200 and to extend it that long I needed an aperture of f/24. I obviously didn't need that aperture for the depth of field, only to get the desired shutter speed. The sun set that day at around 5:30pm and this was shot at 7pm with a focal length of 35mm. Somebody commented that they would rather see it in color, but I felt that color was not needed for this image since it would pretty much only be one color. When I do color, I like lots of strong, saturated colors, not just one subtle color. Of course, I'd be happy to print it in color for anyone willing to pay for that and it would be a one of a kind because I wouldn't print it in color myself.
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Ty Randall
